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SERMONS AND SONGS 

V 



OF 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 



BY 

EDMUND H. SEARS, 

AUTHOR OF "THE HEART OF CHKIST,"' " REGENEKATION, 
AND " FOREGLEAMS OF IMMORTALITY." 



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BOSTON: 
NOYES, HOLMES, AND COMPANY, 

219 Washington Street. 

PHILADELPHIA: 

CLAXTON, REMSEN, AND HAFFELFINGER. 







Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

Noyes, Holmes, and Company, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE I 
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED 
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



TO THE 

THREE CHRISTIAN SOCIETIES 

IN 

LANCASTER, WAYLAND, AND WESTON, 

IN WHOSE SERVICE THESE SERMONS WERE FIRST PREPARED, AND WITH 

WHOM I HAVE HELD PASTORAL RELATIONS, FRAUGHT WITH 

THE MEMORIES OF HAPPY YEARS, 

€l)i$ balxxmt 

IS MOST GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED. 



PREFACE. 



The discourses comprised in this volume have 
been selected with special reference to those days 
observed by the Christian Church in commemora- 
tion of the fundamental facts of the Gospel history, 
and to the Christian life and experience which grow 
from a living apprehension of the system of truth 
which rests upon them. I do not regard it as the 
province of the Sermon to go behind the facts them- 
selves, or try to prove them. That belongs to works 
of another kind. The Sermon assumes them as 
premises acknowledged by the congregation, and 
prophesies from them, but in such wise and with 
such applications to the wants of the human heart, 
as to complement the historical evidence with the 
clearest spiritual vision and the most assured expe- 
rience of Christian believers. This in itself is evi- 
dence, and without it the historical facts are of little 
avail, and finally lose their hold, even upon the in- 
tellect, notwithstanding the completeness of the his- 
toric demonstration. 

In our church service the Sermon consummates 
in the hymn, or sacred song, which makes the heart 
lyrical with Jthe truth it sets forth. The idea that 



VI PREFACE. 

the sentiment which inspires the hymn is a hindrance 
to exact criticism, or the clearest and truest interpre- 
tation of the record, I resist as false in theory, and 
proved abundantly so in practice. A plodding criti- 
cism keeps close to the earth, and fails to see the sig- 
nificance of some of the most large and positive affir- 
mations of the Gospel narrative, and so pares them 
away and reduces the whole Christian Revelation 
within the compass of our earthly vision. The best 
and most trustworthy historians are men who have 
enough of the imaginative faculty to reproduce the 
past as it really lived ; and the best commentators 
have been men whose intuitions were large and deep 
enough to bring them into some correspondency with 
the Mind that inspired the letter, so that they may 
not merely dig over the surface of the letter itself. 

Without claiming these qualifications, I would only 
say that I had written at different times several lyr- 
ical pieces which were afloat in collections of hymns, 
or in periodicals, sometimes altered and mutilated. 
I have brought them together in this volume, some 
of them revised and amended, some of them simply 
restored, and I have added others not before pub- 
lished. As they are more or less adapted to the sub- 
jects of the discourses, and help to give the truths 
which they handle a fullness of utterance, I have in- 
terspersed them, like the hymns in the Sunday Ser- 
vice, though some of them are lyrics rather than 
hymns. The song, or hymn, should be a summing up 



PREFACE. • Vll 

of the sermon, helping us to take home its truth, and 
so carry it with us as to fill our daily life with its 
melodies. I hesitated long in regard to some of 
these songs, because they are flavored so much with 
personal experience ; but this is true of most of the 
hymns that speak to the condition of others, and as 
best advised, I concluded to put them in, trusting to 
the large indulgence of my readers. 

The Sermons were written, not for the press, but 
the pulpit, and are given mainly as they were deliv- 
ered. I should revise them a good deal more if I 
sought to reduce them to the standard of classical 
taste, but I believe in that way they would lose in 
point and directness ; and so I dismiss them as they 
are, hoping they will find a response in the hearts of 
some readers worthy of the themes which they set 
forth. 

I believe every Christian should have church rela- 
tions, and be faithful to them, and I have always 
studied to render faithful service to the denomina- 
tion where a good Providence placed me ; not by try- 
ing to conform to the average opinions which may 
be current among them to-day, but by trying to grasp 
and bring forth anew the vital truths essential alike 
to individual progress and denominational life. For 
when brought face to face with the central truths of 
Christianity, the idea of sect merges in the larger 
conception of the Church Universal, with Christ for 
its living Head and daily inspiration. I believe the 



Vlll PREFACE. 

best service which any man can render his denomi- 
nation is to help on a consummation like this ; and 
this I would do in perfect loyalty to the branch of 
the Church to which it is my privilege to belong, and 
as some return for the large freedom of opinion and 
utterance which they have vouchsafed and defended. 
The time I believe is not far off when there is to be 
larger freedom in every branch of the Christian Zion 
for the treatment and readjustment of the great 
truths of Religion, and that this freedom is to con- 
summate, not in new divisions, but in broader and 
warmer fellowship, and a more perfect and compre- 
hending unity. For it will be a unity not imposed 
from without, but a growth within, from more intel- 
ligent convictions and the deeper inspirations of the 
Spirit which comes through these convictions them- 
selves. E. H. S. 



CONTENTS. 

— ♦— 

SERMONS. 

PAGE 

I. The Cloud of Witnesses i 

II. One Mediator 19 

III. The Will-power 35 

IV. Calvary 51 

V. Resurrection and Ascension .... 67 

VI. Intercessions of the Spirit .... 85 

VII. The Gospel Contrasts 99 

VIII. Treading the Wine-press . . . . 117 

IX. The New Creation 135 

X. Concerning Death 149 

XI. The Universal Redemption 167 

XII. The Box of Ointment 183 

XIII. No more Sea 199 

XIV. The Christian Church as a Means of Progress 219 
XV. Ideals of Womanhood 239 

XVI. The Divine Life-plan 259 

XVII. Home 279 

XVIII. Heavenly Treasures 297 

XIX. The Immediate Knowledge of God . . .319 

SONGS AND HYMNS. 

Christmas Carols 17 

Christmas Song 33 

Peace, be Still 49 

The Twisted Thorn ....... 65 

A Song of Victory 81 



x CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

The Three Advents 97 

A Song in the Minor Key 115 

The Silent Prayer 131 

The New Morning 147 

Little Willie Waking Up 163 

The Young Hunter 181 

Ideals 197 

Parted 215 

Not Lost but Risen 216 

Song for the Coming Crisis 235 

Hymn for the Plymouth Celebration . . . 237 

Girlhood and Womanhood 255 

Above the Storms . . . . . • . . 275 

" Feed My Lambs " 293 

Glad Worship . . 294 

I Want no Flowers . . . . . . . . 295 

Vesper Hymn 296 

Chambers of Imagery 313 



SERMONS AND SONGS. 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

(preached all-saints day.) 

Hebrews xii. I. Seeing we also are compassed about with so 
great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, 
and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run 
with patie7tce the race that is set before us. 

r I ^HE writer of this book, called " the Epistle to 
-*- the Hebrews," is not known with any cer- 
tainty. There is no question, however, that it is a 
genuine production of the primitive Church, written 
by one of the contemporaries of the Apostles, and 
that it reflects the mind of the early believer before 
Christianity had been corrupted by pagan philoso- 
phy. The book has a unity and plan which are very 
striking, and it sets forth the apostolic doctrine with 
much fervor and perspicuity. 

In the chapter from which I take the text, and 
indeed the whole chapter preceding, the writer sets 
forth the doctrine of angels. He goes back and 



2 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

enumerates a long train of martyrs who have passed 
up to the skies, some of them through the baptism 
of blood and fire. These, he reminds his readers, 
are a witness-train, and he refers to them as if they 
were still looking on ; a vast company that girds 
them round to help them gain the victory. His doc- 
trine seems to be, Ye are acting in no obscure 
corner. All the ranks above are looking on. You 
stand at the centre of an immense amphitheatre. 
Row beyond row they are watching you. " Ye are 
come unto Mount Zion, to the city of the living 
God ; to the heavenly Jerusalem ; to an innumerable 
company of angels ; to the general assembly of 
the church of the first-born which are written in 
heaven ; to the spirits of good men made perfect ; 
and to God the judge of all." He does not refer to 
these merely as examples. Those who have put on 
immortality he calls elsewhere " ministering spirits 
sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of 
salvation." Such, as we gather from no obscure in- 
timations in the Acts and in Paul's writings, and 
from the words of the Master himself, was the prim- 
itive Christian doctrine of guardian angels. I need 
not say what courage and what earnest of victory it 
gave to the early converts to Christianity. It was 
as if countless tiers of faces were looking down, 
turning aside in grief if they faltered and failed ; and 
as if hands multitudinous as the waves clapped to- 
gether and cheered them on at every victory they 
achieved. 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 3 

This admirable Christian philosophy, or rather 
pneumatology, became corrupted. It degenerated 
into saint-worship and thence into image-worship. 
In this way, by about the seventh century, the old pa- 
ganism under new names had been imported into the 
very heart of the Church and the worship of pictures 
and statues entered largely into the cultus of Chris- 
tendom. The fiercest struggle of the eighth century 
arose from an attempt of the Greek Emperor to re- 
form the paganism of the Church and break the im- 
ages. It was in vain. The people rose up every- 
where in rebellion against the edicts. " I am too 
poor," writes one of the bishops, " to possess books. 
I have no leisure for reading. I enter a church 
choked with the cares of the world ; the glowing 
colors attract my sight and delight my eyes like a 
flowery meadow, and the glory of God steals imper- 
ceptibly into my soul. I gaze on the fortitude of the 
martyr and the crown with which he is rewarded, and 
the fire of holy enthusiasm kindles within me, and 
I fall down and worship God, and through the mar- 
tyr receive salvation." 

It was the abuse of a doctrine educed from the 
deep wants of the human heart. Protestantism 
should have respected the doctrine itself and cleared 
it of idolatrous perversion. But the reformers of the 
sixteenth century swept away not only the corrup- 
tions but the doctrine along with them ; so that our 
denuded Protestantism looks up and finds the wit- 



4 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

ness-train all vanished from sight and a blank space 
between us and the naked heavens. 

The cloud of witnesses ! We will endeavor to bring 
out the primitive Christian doctrine and show its 
practical use, power, and influence. That this innu- 
merable train of witnesses are spectators of all that 
we do, or even have cognizance of our external life, 
would be a construction altogether too literal, 
avouched neither by Scripture nor reason. Only 
the Omniscient eye sees all our actions and all states 
of mind and affection ere yet they have ripened into 
conduct. In quite other methods, however, the wit- 
ness-train may beset us and engird us, and be a more 
mighty incentive to us than they could become as 
outside witnesses or lookers-on. 

The general doctrine as I apprehend it is this, — 
that the spirit-world and this are continuous and 
interblending and from that run down into this the 
influence and energy on which we draw mightily in 
our struggles and conquests ; that no man is alone 
or isolated ; that there are chords of sympathy that 
run from us along the higher ranks of being ; that 
the repentance of a single sinner is an event that 
sends a wavelet of joy into the breasts of those who 
have been an invisible guard around his virtue and 
helped determine his decision for the right. 1 The 
universe is related part to part, visible and invisible. 
There are laws of attraction pertaining to mind 

1 See Luke xv. 7, 10. 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 5 

and spirit as well as matter, which no gulfs of space 
can suspend or abolish, so that no portion is broken 
off from any other portion ; but there are fine threads 
of nerve which run through the whole and make a 
calamity in one part a calamity to all. But let me 
illustrate and break the general doctrine into its 
specialties. The cloud of witnesses may be mani- 
fest and affect us in one or all of three ways : — 

To sight, or external senses ; 

To faith made rational and clear ; 

To the heart made peaceful and strong.* 

I. There may be disclosures of immortality to 
our grosser perceptions ; I will not say to the bodily 
senses, but to the senses that lie close within them 
and are sheathed by them, and which before death 
as well as after may have open converse with higher 
things. This is only saying that we are already im- 
mortal beings and belong to a higher sphere than 
this earthly one. This, however, is not the sort of 
disclosure which the Scriptures refer to when they 
speak of the company of the witness-train. This 
writer to the Hebrews does not mean that we are 
connected by sense with them nor they with us, for 
he puts into the same enumeration Jesus the Media- 
tor of the New Covenant and God the Judge of all. 
The reasons against any such connection as this, as 
a normal condition of our present being, are obvious 
enough. A sentient connection with spheres of be- 
ing where our duties do not lie would not enlarge 



6 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

and strengthen but repress our higher and nobler 
manhood. Even now and here the continual prob- 
lem is how to keep the sense faculties from becom- 
ing so luxuriant as to overtop and repress the 
reason. They are the most seductive, the most 
bewildering, the most lying of all our faculties, un- 
less educated and subordinated and their impressions 
constantly corrected and verified by the rational 
powers. The infant, when his senses first open upon 
this world, sees all its objects projected confusedly 
upon one ground, and he must learn by experience 
the laws of perspective. It took five thousand years 
of unfolding reason to reverse the verdict of the 
senses which reported the universe inside out and 
upside down. Men of science tell us at this day 
that descriptions of phenomena by unscientific ob- 
servers are unreliable and nearly worthless for all 
the purposes of science. For yet stronger reasons, 
if in this childhood of our being the spirit-world 
were given to our senses, it would give us phe- 
nomena rather than the higher realities ; appear- 
ances rather than the laws that underlie them — 
those eternal and universal laws which in the book 
of Divine Revelation are addressed to a higher and 
worthier part of our nature. Even when our spir- 
itual senses are first unsheathed and the eternal sub- 
stances are about us, it seems probable from all 
analogy that appearances will lie upon us adaptive 
and tender, and melt away or disclose the laws that 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES. J 

govern them, as our higher nature unfolds and is 
prepared for the eternal verities in their unclouded 
glory. 

For yet higher reasons the witness-train are not 
manifest to our senses. Hero-worship in this 
world is a very dangerous kind of homage, tending 
to draw out of the worshipper the prime principles 
of manhood and waft incense to the pride and 
vanity of the hero. Saint-worship is more danger- 
ous still, and would become sheer idolatry if we had 
visible connection and intercourse with the witness- 
train — for among that train are your own kinsfolk, 
to whom your hearts went out in their warmest love, 
and to whom in their glorified being the affections 
yearn with a fervor which time does not cool, but 
fans, rather, into more burning flame. If they ap- 
peared above you they would fill the void till the 
Father's face were shut out from view, and you 
would need constantly the voice of the rebuking 
angel — " See thou do it not ! " Hence the guards, 
the warnings, the denunciations interposed through- 
out the old Bible, and repeated in the new, against 
the necromancy that would substitute "familiar 
spirits " for the Spirit of the Lord, or take reports 
from them as a revelation from heaven. 

II. There was a man, nevertheless, who appeared 
in this world with all the wants and susceptibilities 
of our human nature, and so endowed at the same 
time with the presence and indwelling of the God- 



8 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

head, that none of these dangers beset Him. He 
dwelt "in heaven" and on the earth at the same 
time. Not alone the words of Jesus but his life is 
a revelation to us on this as on kindred themes. 
The full import of the words, that He " brought im- 
mortality to light," will appear to you as you follow 
Him from Bethlehem to Ascension Mount. This 
life divides itself into four of its grander epochs, 
representing the periods corresponding to it in every 
human probation on the earth — his birth, his temp- 
tation, his death, and his return to his place on high. 
At each of these events the clouds disappear from 
the heights and show the heavens touching the 
earth, and the cloud of witnesses transfusing celestial 
energy through its affairs. The song over Bethle- 
hem was the quiring of " the young-eyed cherubim," 
whose melodies have never died away since the 
morning stars sang together, but whose chant then 
and there was so strong and triumphant that it 
broke audibly through the discords of earth. The 
angels that " came and ministered " unto Jesus after 
his great victory over temptation, disclose one of the 
sources of that ineffable peace, falling as it were 
from hovering and protecting wings, vouchsafed to 
every follower of Christ when he triumphs over evil 
and sin. The valley of the shadow of death through 
which Jesus passed, lay between the Mount of 
Transfiguration and the open sepulchre of resurrec- 
tion morning. The witness-train were visible on 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 9 

the mount, in Gethsemane, and at the sepulchre ; 
they were close on the other side as the divinely ap- 
pointed guard shining through the rents in this veil 
of mortality. And on Ascension Mount they appear 
again. Do you say that all this was miracle ? Un- 
doubtedly it was ; but you may forget that miracle is 
not the breaking of law, but the revelation thereof 
giving us fragmentary gleams of the vast system of 
agencies and workings whose unveiled operation 
would bewilder and amaze us. The weak, tempted, 
suffering nature of Jesus was like all other human 
natures. He came not to save Himself but to save 
humanity ; to lift up our faith into serener light ; to 
take up our experience into his own, and show 
openly at the same time the helps and the guards 
that are always nigh. His experience would not be 
ours, unless the helps and the guards were ours as 
well as the trials and the sufferings. Not as the 
Eternal Creative Word, not as the God-with-us did 
He need the angelic ministries, but as a sharer in 
our common humanity ; and as such He opens vistas 
to us of the cloud of witnesses that surround us, 
when to break down the separating wall would make 
sure an invasion we could never bear. 

If not to the senses, then yet to faith made ra- 
tional and clear the witness train is disclosed. This 
is what the writer specially means. He has just 
given an admirable description of this faculty of 
faith. He calls it the substance (uTroVracns) of things 



IO SERMONS AND SONGS. 

hoped for, the demonstration of things not seen. 
That is to say, faith made open and clear apprehends 
its objects as the real substances beyond the shift- 
ing panorama of sight. Faith has the demonstra- 
tion or higher beholding of things invisible to mortal 
eyes. He appeals here to a power within us which, 
being divinely touched and illumined, lays hold of its 
objects and possesses them with an assurance beyond 
that of sight. Jesus not only had disclosures of im- 
mortality, but He gives interpretations thereof, and 
reveals the laws and the substance that underlie 
them. Without these interpretations the disclos- 
ures of the spirit-world would only come to us as 
" apparitions," and so the world generally has agreed 
to call them. Sight only gives us phenomena ; faith 
made clear and rational gives us what lies within the 
phenomena, and is the ground and substance of all 
its exflorations. 

Illustrate. Look at the mazy round of night and 
day, and even and morn, and suns and stars in their 
courses ! How different to the child who only sees 
appearances and the man of reason who sees what is 
within them, and judges not from phenomena but 
from eternal and shining laws. So of faith made 
rational and clear. To our higher reason God may 
so reveal to us the things of the higher life, may 
make the laws of spiritual existence so radiant and 
all harmonizing, so rounded and complete, both to 
the intellect and the heart, that the eternal world 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES. II 

shall be mirrored down to us here in time as it 
never could be by any fragmentary disclosures to 
our timid and wildering senses. And when this is 
so, faith has the substance of things hoped for, the 
demonstration and beholding of things to come, just 
as they will be found when we pass into them down 
into the depths of the endless years ! Hence it was 
that these first Christians acted as in presence of 
the great realities. Those realities broke upon their 
faith with a power and certitude which sense even 
could not give, so that on the cross and in the 
fire this world of shows faded out altogether, and 
the city of the living God, the heavenly Jersalem, the 
myriads of angels in full assembly, the spirits of 
good men perfected, Jesus the mediator and God 
over all, — these rose in brightening ranks and filled 
all the firmanent of vision as the substance of things 
hoped for, and of which all things else are but the 
earnest and the shadow. 

III. But higher yet, and still farther inward, are 
manifestations to us of the cloud of witnesses — 
namely, to the heart made peaceful and strong. 

It is, I believe, a law of spiritual being, that there 
are bonds which are subtile and pervasive, and 
which join the body of true disciples as a living and 
organic whole, so that 

" The church on earth and all the dead 
But one communion make." 

This, in fact, is the doctrine of the New Testament, 



12 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

and this is the true Catholic Church, standing com- 
plete in its beauty before the eye of the Lord, every 
part joined vitally to every other part, each receiving 
the currents of life from all the rest, and being thus 
swept mightily along. There are two kinds of 
energy by which the Lord draws us up into his 
peaceful heavens. One is communion with Himself, 
or prayer, the other is that energy called in the 
Apostle's Creed " the communion of saints." These 
last words have come to mean little or nothing in 
our rationalizing Protestantism that crumbles every- 
thing into individualism. In the primitive Church 
they meant that every true believer was included 
vitally in one great Catholicity, in which he was per- 
vaded by the common consciousness, and by which 
the life of all the saints above and below flowed into 
him. And this is none other than the fulfillment 
of the prayer of Christ : " Holy Father, keep through 
thine own name those whom thou hast given me, 
that they may be one as we are. As thou, Father, 
art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one 
in us, that the world may believe that thou hast 
sent me." And death has no power to make any 
rents or breaks in this communion and this unity. 
It is the sphere of mind flowing into mind, and heart 
into heart ; and inasmuch as death cleaves away our 
clumsy clogs and hindrances, these interactions are 
more perfect than before. The Saviour said, " If I 
go away I will come again ; " that is, come nearer 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 1 3 

than ever. This is that Church catholic in which 
human popedoms have no power of excommunica- 
tion, for it is drawn into unity, not by outward dis- 
tinctions and priestly rules, but by inward fitness 
and regeneration. Hence, with every evil over- 
come, and every new likeness of Christ inwardly put 
on, you are brought more completely within the cir- 
cle of the great cloud of witnesses, the myriads of 
angels in full assembly, and the spirits of good men 
made perfect ; their strength passes mightily into 
your soul and their peace is laid brightly within the 
heart. This is one of the essential elements of our 
strength when we are supported and buoyed up in 
doing the Divine will. You are not marching alone. 
You feel it ; you know it. Visible or invisible, a 
mighty host is with you ; you are marching with 
them in countless and serried numbers ; one spirit 
moves the whole and lifts their feet, and they keep 
step to the same music. If we are with the right 
and for it, though all the world have gone over to 
the other side, the long line of ancestral and glorified 
men are behind us and breathing upon us, 

"Troops of beautiful tall angels to enshield us from all wrong." 

If they came to us from without, if they came to 
our timid senses, they would repress our manhood 
and overlay it ; taking the place of our reason and 
leading us servilely after them. But now they build 
us up within, their celestial energy we make our 



14 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

own ; we appropriate it by our rational and volun- 
tary life, and so put it on as our robe and diadem. 

How impressively this subject appeals to us now ! 
We have just closed four years of trial during which 
thousands of martyrs, the flower of the country, 
have given up their lives to save it. 1 In the light of 
my subject, death has not taken them from us, but 
given them to us, and their spirit is to inspire our 
Future and help to unfold it. For the more of good 
men that rise up to the place of ancestors, the more 
mighty is the influence that comes invisibly from 
the witness-train. Yea, the more consciously and 
swiftly will the earth and the heavens become one. 
What a privilege, in this view of the matter, to live 
in such times as these ! And how animating the 
thought that as the heavens fill up and bend over 
us more nearly, the more virtue comes down to the 
earth and the swifter its redemption draweth nigh ! 

The subject abounds with incitements to the 
Christian life which are full of encouragement. It 
takes us out of the little cliques and parties of the 
day, and places us among the blest societies of all 
ages. It raises us out of sect and puts us peacefully 
within the church universal, embracing the first- 
born which are written in heaven and the last good 
man that went up into its pale. Your home may be 
humble, apart, alone ; but if a good life is lived there, 

1 This sermon was preached in 1865. 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 15 

it stands in the centre of an amphitheatre thronged 
with heavenly multitudes, all bending towards you 
and breathing their spirit into yours. Nearest 
about you are those of like character, like trials, and 
like victories, who have conquered through just such 
a path as yours, and whose life beats through you 
with every step that is gained. Farther up are the 
lengthening ranges, the clouds of witnesses, and 
looking down through all and breathing through all, 
is Christ the Mediator of the new covenant and God 
the Judge of all. Only remember the condition 
by which you put on the strength and are swept by 
the spirit of this goodly multitude, — " laying aside 
every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset 
us, and running with patience the race that is set 
before us, ever looking to Jesus the author and fin- 
isher of our faith." 



CHRISTMAS CAROLS. 

It came upon the midnight clear, 
That glorious song of old, 

From angels bending near the earth 
To touch their harps of gold ; 

Peace on the earth, good will to men 
From heaven's all-gracious King " — 

The world in solemn stillness lay- 
To hear the angels sing. 

Still through the cloven skies they come 

With peaceful wings unfurled, 
And still their heavenly music floats 

O'er all the weary world ; 
Above its sad and lowly plains 

They bend on hovering wing, 
And ever o'er its Babel-sounds 

The blessed angels sing. 

But with the woes of sin and strife 
The world has suffered long ; 

Beneath the angel-strain have rolled 
Two thousand years of wrong ; 

And man, at war with man, hears not 
The love-song which they bring ; — 

Oh hush the noise, ye men of strife, 
And hear the angels sing ! 

2 



CHRISTMAS CAROLS. 

And ye, beneath life's crushing load, 

Whose forms are bending low, 
Who toil along the climbing way 

With painful steps and slow, 
Look now ! for glad and golden hours 

Come swiftly on the wing ; — 
Oh, rest beside the weary road 

And hear the angels sing ! 



For lo ! the days are hastening on 

By prophet bards foretold, 
When with the ever circling years 

Comes round the age of gold ; 
When Peace shall over all the earth 

Its ancient splendors fling, 
And the whole world give back the song 

Which now the angels sing:. 



II. 

ONE MEDIATOR. 

(CHRISTMAS EVE.) 

I Timothy ii. 6. There is one God and one Mediator be- 
tween God and me?i^ the man Christ Jesus. 

THE word here rendered " Mediator " means 
one who comes between two parties, and, . in 
the more specific Christian sense of the word, be- 
tween two parties to reconcile them and make peace 
between them. It presupposes a state of emnity 
and warfare, so that an old commentator does no 
more than justice to the original when he renders — 
There is one God, and one peace-maker between 
God and man. 

We do not yet, however, come to the full thought 
of the original word. These analogies from human 
affairs only help us a little to climb up to the great 
doctrine involved. A man who goes between two 
hostile armies and negotiates a peace, represents 
very dimly and remotely the Divine Mediation in 
Jesus Christ. On the Divine side this does not 
represent the fact at all. For God has no hostility 
towards his creatures ; the enmity is all on one side, 



20 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

and the fearful chasm and antagonism between the 
Divine nature and human nature do not require any 
treaty-making or going between, that God may 
understand us, and be made placable towards us. 
The thing needed is not an arbitrator to settle dis- 
puted points, but a channel rather through which 
the Divine life and energy can flow. Suppose this 
Mediator, then, not merely to come between the two 
parties, but to embody the whole spirit and moral 
power of the rightful one, — that these possess Him, 
and clothe Him with their majesty and grace, — that 
thus He comes to the hostile party on their own 
ground and among their own camp-fires, and dis- 
solves their hatred beneath the touches of his own 
spirit, and that then they throw down their arms and 
strike their banners and say we are reconciled and 
we will rebel no more. This will give more com- 
pletely the burden of the text, "there is one God 
and one Peace-maker between God and man." He 
is peace-maker in that he opens between both the 
streams and courses through which the Divine Peace 
flows to man and reconciles him, so to say, under the 
Omnipotence of the Divine Love. 

The prime necessity of a Mediator is not because 
God needs to be appeased or reconciled, but because 
He does require means and instrumentalities to reach 
the lowest of his children. Think of the distance 
between the Infinite God and finite and feeble man ! 
He cannot come to us in his unveiled and eternal 



ONE MEDIATOR. 21 

essence, for then we should drop senseless into the 
deeps of his own absolute Being. So He veils that 
essence and accommodates it to the state of all the 
creatures He' has made. It were not enough, again, 
that God come to us through the motions of his 
Spirit within us. We are sinful, sensuous, dark, lia- 
ble all the while to mistake God's motions within us, 
in our own noxious, smouldering passions. There 
must be, then, not only the light within — there must 
also be the light without and above ; there must be 
the objective manifestation of the Deity. 

But observe, again, what an emphasis Paul lays on 
this oneness of the mediatorial office. There can be 
only one mediator even as there can be only one 
God. Indeed he puts one as the correlate of the 
other. For he means to say, There is only one God 
and only one peace-maker between God and man. 
How and why this is so we shall see by drawing out 
the three propositions involved in the text, and see 
at the same time the amplitude and grandeur of this 
fundamental truth of the New Testament. 

There must be one mediator. v 

And he must be a man. 

And a man in the supreme sense — the man 
Christ Jesus. 

There is only one — but why not ? Why not 
make all things the media through which God comes 
to man, — all nature, all good men, all spirits and 
angels ? Is not the whole universe a system of me- 



22 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

diation through which God seeks to impart Himself 
to his children ? Does He not come in the spring- 
time, in the May-flowers that open their eyes upon 
us out of his own gentleness and beauty ? And does 
He not speak out of his majesty in the thunder and 
the storm ? Does He not come to us out of every 
pure heart and all pure lips that have a gospel to 
tell us ? And does He not come in the angels that 
guard us and encamp round about us ? 

Yes ; but does He come in these or in all together 
in the sense asserted by the text ; not only as medi- 
ators, but as peace-givers ? Are these the channels 
through which the Divine Peace-giver comes in to 
wash the cells of the heart and cool the fever of heart 
and brain. That nature is no such mediation as 
this, is obvious enough if you will look at the facts 
of the case and not take the dreams of sentimental- 
ists for realities. Nature is no direct and perfect 
medium of the Divine character and essence. It is 
an exhibition to us, doubtless, in a lower degree of 
God's ideals of the good, the perfect, and the fair, 
but an exhibition as well of the condition and moods 
of sinful and imperfect men. All that man is casts 
its shadow on the dial-plate of nature, — a shadow 
sometimes most portentous and baleful. Convul- 
sions, storms, deformities, miasmas, disease, death, 
corruption, — these are all involved in the processes 
of nature, these come in as contrasts to the peace 
and the paler beauty which are also there. Nature 



OXE MEDIATOR. 23 

is the thought of God, say some of the scientists. 
But God's thought about what, and under what con- 
ditions ? 

It is God's thought obscured and dimmed and in- 
verted sometimes ere it gets to its ultimations in the 
material universe. Do you suppose He would create 
the wolves, the tigers, the vermin, and the reptiles, 
the noisome things that swarm into life, as the exhi- 
bition of his thoughts ? Even the clear skies with 
drought and frost, May mornings with east winds, 
winter with its damps and chills, are hardly the 
supreme beauty unveiled and clear, but struggling 
rather through media that obscure it. Any one of 
you can imagine a fairer nature than the one we 
have. Everything indicates that nature in its com- 
pleteness is not so much the highest ideal of God as 
the reflection and representation of man, — all that is 
good in him and all that is bad copied out of him ; 
both heaven and hell painted on the canvas that 
hangs around him, and showing him the grace and 
sweetness of the one and the deformities and storm- 
ful agencies of the other. Hence nature alone, since 
the world began, never has been any such mediation 
as yields God to man in his supreme perfections, but 
dimmed by the medium itself. 

I should follow precisely the same line of argument 
touching the mediation of good men. None are 
good enough to stand between me and the supreme 
excellency without refracting it, or, worse yet, cast- 



24 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

ing their shadow instead of transmitting the light 
Saints, philanthropists, and martyrs are mediators to 
us in a quite inferior sense, and as such we thank 
God that He raises them up. They come between 
God and the fallen and the lost ; they bring precious 
gifts from Him ; they bring kindly sympathies, holy 
charities, words of cheer. The Divine Grace some- 
times gets reflected from them in its sweeter charms. 
But they too are sinful like you and me, and they 
are no such peace-makers between God and the sin- 
ner as the text describes. They are no such chan- 
nels as God yields Himself through, in the tidal 
fullness of his renewing love. They have struggled 
with sin like the rest of us, and are struggling yet ; 
yea, they have felt precisely the need which the text 
indicates — and they feel it now — the- need of one 
peace-maker between God and man, through whom 
the Divine peace itself shall come like a river 
and make human nature at one with the Divine. 
There is the mediation of angels, the " cloud of wit- 
nesses " I have just described, the heavens that bend 
near us and out of which the heavenly peace comes 
down into our hearts. But at the head of this wit- 
ness-train, as you remember, is " Jesus the Media- 
tor of the new covenant," made objectively to the 
Church and the world the revelation of the Divine 
attributes and the impersonation of the eternal love 
so that the ministry of angels is in no danger of 
becoming a mere spiritism taking sides with our sel- 



ONE MEDIATOR. 2$ 

fish passions or wildering fancies, but is merged and 
included in the higher and broader ministries of the 
Son of God. 

Only one mediator, and he is human. And why 
must he be a man ? Simply because God is human 
and nothing else than humanity can transmit Him as 
He is. This grand truth of the humanity of God, 
rightly discriminated and apprehended, is one of the 
most precious and vital in all the treasury of the 
Gospel. It is opposed to two specious and besetting 
errors, that God is an impassive force somewhere at 
the centre of things, whence this great mechanism 
of worlds grew out by spontaneous evolution, — and 
it is opposed to the more hideous notion that He is 
an arbitrary sovereign. In the place of either it 
brings out the doctrine that God is a being who like 
us has feelings, desires, yearnings, yea wants, for He 
wants to impart his own peace, and gain from his 
creatures some returns for his infinite love. Open 
your Bible and see how directly you are drawn away 
from the old stoicism that God reposes on the peaks 
of eternity cold and serene, leaving the world with 
their mean affairs to inferior deities. In the Bible 
we read of Divine humanities, Divine griefs and 
sorrows, as if the Divine sympathies ran down 
through all sensitive beings and felt every pulse of 
woe in his universe. I cannot see the Scripture or 
the reason of the proposition which some of our 
theologians have striven to make good — that God 



26 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

is incapable of suffering. As if that were perfection ! 
What would you think of a man who sought to be- 
come perfect by becoming impassive and turning 
himself into stone ? As man becomes better and 
more godlike he becomes more susceptible to the 
sorrows of his fellows, and makes their griefs his 
griefs, and in this very susceptibility he ascends to 
a bliss altogether more sacred and plenary than these 
men of wood and granite, that never suffer at all. 
And whence does all this susceptibility come to us ? 
It comes out of the heart of God. It is a trait of 
the Divine Nature transcribed into man. It tells us 
that there are sufferings which are Divine ; and that 
the more our natures become open to them the 
more we become changed into the likeness of our 
glorious original. Thus we speak of the Divine 
Compassion, and that means suffering with another, 
so that in our spontaneous speech we belie our 
wretched pagan theologies. And as if description 
by words were not enough, St. John in apocalyptic 
vision looks away up to the throne of God and 
what does he see there ? Not an arbitrary sov- 
ereign clothed in pomp and terror, not the light- 
nings out of the storm-clouds, not the show of mag- 
nificence affected by earthly sovereigns — but right 
in the midst of the throne, as it were getting 
sight of the Heart of God, a lamb as it had bee7i 
slain — the wounded love of the Creator himself, as 
if there was a Calvary not in Palestine alone but 



ONE MEDIATOR. 27 

away in the Heart of God, where we crucify Him by 
our disobedience every day. 

This being so, how plain it becomes that only 
Humanity can mediate between man and the Divine 
Essence. Nature is competent to evolve his power 
and magnificence ; we feel that sensibly enough 
when she crushes us like insects out of her way, or 
brushes us by the hundred into her great gulf- 
stream, but in all her gamut she has not a single 
tone that is human or which can give us one lisp of 
the humanity of God. Nature in her impotency and 
her failure, man in his most urgent wants, point alike 
to this grand necessity, that there shall be a media- 
tor, and that that mediator shall be a man. 

And not any or every man, but the man Christ 
Jesus ; a man whose nature opens both ways — up 
to God on the Divine side, and down to the lowest 
of us on the human ; not some tall angel talking to 
us from a distance out of the porches of heaven, but 
some one clothed in our nature, touching the earth 
in its lowest place of evil and darkness, and at the 
same time touching the inmost heaven where all the 
Divine scenery lay upon his soul ; not sinful human- 
ity, that cuts off the light rather than transmits it, but 
one supremely perfect, through whose translucency 
the whole Divine Nature is imaged forth. " Be- 
lievest thou not that I am in the Father and the 
Father in me ? The words that I speak unto you I 
speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in 



28 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

me He doeth the works." " I in them and they in me, 
that they also may be made perfect in one, and that 
the world may know that thou hast sent me." " All 
things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no 
man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither know- 
eth any man the Father save the Son and he to 
whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. Come unto 
me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will 
give you rest." These proofs and illustrations show 
yet more openly the Divine burden of truth which 
the text brings home to us, — one God and one 
peace-maker between God- and men, the man Christ 
Jesus. 

And what is the peace from God which comes 
through this mediation ? 

First we say, peace of mind, rest from those 
tossings of controversy for which there is no umpire 
or final appeal. " Ye call me Master and Lord, and 
ye say well, for so I am." Human reason, after its 
guessings and roamings from sect to sect, yearns for 
a Lord and a Master, not to crush it down but to 
take it up, weak, bewildered, and weary, and fold it in 
that Divine Reason whence alone it borrows vigor 
and illumination. Here is rest from the trials of 
faith, peace from the j anglings of sect, assurance 
after the twilight gleams of our own intuitions. If 
you have been through the circuit of guess-work 
after truth, and like the man lost in boundless woods, 
come back at evening to the spot you left in the 



ONE MEDIATOR. 29 

morning, you will find how sweet is the intellectual 
repose in the Reason of God or the Word made flesh. 
" I have wandered long and far," says one of these 
men, " but have not found the rest which you say is 
to be obtained. I have interrogated my own soul, 
but it answers not. I have gazed upon nature, but its 
many voices speak no articulate language to me ; and 
more especially when I gaze on the bright page of the 
midnight heavens, those orbs gleam upon me with so 
cold a light and amid a silence so portentous, that 
I am terrified with the spectacle of the infinite 
solitude." To the intellect weary with its wander- 
ings, and with no God-ward determinations, appeals 
the doctrine of one God and one peace-maker be- 
tween God and man. I do not mean by this that 
repose in the Christian atonement, or faith in the 
Christian revelation, forbids or supersedes investiga- 
tion, doubt, denial, and the most careful balancing of 
evidence. No ; doubt if you must, deny if you must, 
weigh the arguments in the nicest intellectual scales. 
The clearest affirmation comes after doubt ; but alas 
for the inquiries that end in nothing ; alas for the 
search after truth that goes down in darkness ; alas 
for the gropings after God that diverge away from 
Him till He is out of sight and out of hearing ; and 
because the greatest and best minds in all the 
Christian centuries have used the highest faculties 
of reason and investigation till doubt has melted 
away in the broader illuminations of the Word, I 



30 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

urge with renewed confidence the claim of the one 
peace-maker between God and men. 

Peace to the heart consumed with its fevers, lac- 
erated with its passions, wounded in its deepest 
sympathies and affections, tainted with the poison of 
self-love, till touched and pervaded with the love of 
God. And it is not touched and pervaded with the 
love of God while He is far off in the eternal abyss ; 
or a sovereign enforcing arbitrary decrees only for 
his own solitary glory. But through this mediation 
He does open the channels for our hearts to go up 
to Him and the Divine heart to throb down to us 
and fill this great chasm in the soul, this want of 
some object worthy of its immortal desires and end- 
less aspirations. 

Peace to the conscience. What anxiety, what 
weariness in endless self-analysis, in always looking 
into ourselves ; in trying to take ourselves to pieces 
and put ourselves together again as they do watches 
that will not keep time. This is what some people 
call self-culture, and it is a kind of culture which too 
much followed is sure to end in self-bewilderments 
and self-disgusts. How unsatisfying this kind of 
self-culture, at least to a spiritual nature quick and 
intuitive ! Do your best, and it is not God's best, 
and the accuser has you in his eye and follows you 
with equal steps and corners you up and goads and 
worries you. Acting from ourselves only we do 
nothing that satisfies us and always carry about the 



ONE MEDIATOR. 3 I 

burden of a tormenting self-consciousness. And 
you rest from this by passing over through the 
Christ to Him who takes the work upon Himself in 
the sovereign mouldings of the Divine grace. 

Peace after storms ; for in the one Mediator are 
solved those mysteries of life and death that perplex 
and trouble us. For He turns upon them the light 
of immortality and shows the end they are working 
out ; and seen thus they are like the crests of the 
waves when kissed by the breaking sunbeams and 
sinking into calm. And so for the mind and the 
heart and the conscience, and for the events that 
bear us onward, " There is one peace-maker be- 
tween God and men — the man Christ Jesus." 



CHRISTMAS SONG. 

Calm on the listening ear of night 

Come heaven's melodious strains, 
Where wild Judasa stretches forth 

Her silver mantled plains ; 
Celestial choirs from courts above 

Shed sacred glories there, 
And angels, with their sparkling lyres, 

Make music on the air. 

The answering hills of Palestine 

Send back the glad reply, 
And greet from all their holy heights 

The Day-Spring from on high ; 
O'er the blue depths of Galilee, 

There comes a holier calm, 
And Sharon waves, in solemn praise, 

Her silent groves of palm. 

" Glory to God ! " The lofty strain 
The realm of ether fills, 
How sweeps the song of solemn joy 
O'er Judah's sacred hills ! 
" Glory to God ! " The sounding skies 

Loud with their anthems ring, 

" Peace on the earth ; good will to men 

From heaven's Eternal King." 



34 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

Light on thy hills, Jerusalem ! 

The Saviour now is born, 
And bright on Bethlehem's joyous plains 

Breaks the first Christmas morn, 
And brightly on Moriah's brow 

Crowned with her temple spires, 
Which first proclaim the new-born light, 

Clothed with its orient fires. 

This day shall Christian tongues be mute, 

And Christian hearts be cold ? 
Oh, catch the anthem that from heaven 

O'er Judah's mountains rolled, 
When burst upon that listening night 

The high and solemn lay : 
" Glory to God, on earth be peace," 
Salvation comes to-day ! 



III. 

THE WILL-POWER. 

(A SERMON IN LENT.) 

Luke xxii. 42. Not my will but thine. 

THE days preceding the crucifixion of Christ 
were the season during which He walked in 
the shadow of death. The shadow began to fold 
Him in as He came down from the Mount of Trans- 
figuration ; and soon after commenced his last 
journey to Jerusalem. The whole twelve are with 
Him now, and He announces to them plainly that 
He is going up to be crucified. They fall behind in 
amazement and fear, for the dread shadow comes 
over them now for the first time. Gethsemane, how- 
ever, is the place where the shadow falls thick and 
heavy. Unbelievers are fond of contrasting the an- 
guish of Jesus at this time with the bravery and 
firmness with which other martrys have met the 
same extremity. They little know through what 
struggle those other martyrs emerged into the light. 
It is not merely the shadow of physical death that 
falls upon Jesus now. The scene in Gethsemane 
gives us a view of that struggle in its final consum- 



36 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

mation which takes place in all good men who get 
the victory, and which is intense and profound in all 
natures which are themselves profound and great. 
Small or shallow natures know little or nothing about 
it. But in great ones there is a descent into the 
depths of weakness ere there is a rise to the sub- 
limest heights of power. You must look a little 
farther on if you would see of what all this scene in 
Gethsemane was the preparation and the prelude. 
Afterward He says, " All power is given me both in 
heaven and on the earth." And again, " O fools and 
slow of heart to believe ; ought not Christ to have 
suffered these things and to enter into his glory ? " 
Weakness, prostration, prone on the earth to the 
verge of annihilation — this is the scene in Geth- 
semane. Power described in terms of exaltation 
and omnipotence — this is the scene forty days af- 
terwards. 

These days, when the death-shadow rested upon 
the Saviour, the older churches observe as the days 
of Lent, and we are in the midst of them now. In 
those churches they are days of fasting, in which the 
usual pleasures of life are postponed, the churches 
are draped in mourning and dirges are sung in place 
of anthems. I doubt not that those who observe 
these rites in good faith, are helped by them and 
brought into more living sympathy with a suffering 
Redeemer. What we need supremely is, not senti- 
ment, but such sympathy with Him at the trial hour 






THE WILL-POWER. 37 

as will render to us its meaning, so that the same 
strength shall become ours in the time of need. 
This is all gathered up and expressed in the prayer 
— Not as I will, but as thou wilt. It is the absorp- 
tion of the human will in the Divine, and for this 
comes down the strengthening angel. For this are 
all our Lenten days of humiliation, and they do 
nothing for us except as the prayer goes up out of 
our weakness and gets its answer. This, however, 
leads us into the heart of a great subject. There 
are two- phases of character which appear under the 
full operation of the Gospel upon the human heart. 
They seem at first inconsistent, antagonistic, and 
wholly irreconcilable. First, there is weakness, hu- 
mility, non-resistance, turning both cheeks to the 
smiter ; what seems often to a man of the world 
pusilanimity and cowardice. The Gospel requires of 
him who receives it to give up his own will. Hence 
self-abasement, humiliation, and self-surrender are 
reckoned among the Christian virtues, and hence the 
apparent weakness it produces as the lion-heart is 
tamed and made a lamb. 

Then again the Gospel in the person of its believ- 
ers is mighty and aggressive ; and one man clothed 
in its full power becomes more invincible than an 
army with banners. Non-resistance, weakness, hu- 
miliation disappear, and a single man or a single 
woman becomes so strong that the forces of an 
empire may beat against them in vain. 



38 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

Some have fixed upon one of these phases and 
some the other, and so from two very opposite 
stand-points come two classes of objections against 
the practical value of the Christian "faith and con- 
fession. These objections are as old as the writers 
of the second century who assailed the Christian 
revelation, and they are as new as the disciples of 
Carlyle who assail it still, in the same way. Un- 
questionably, it is the blending of these apparent 
opposites which constitutes the highest human ex- 
cellence which the Gospel aims to produce. It is 
Gethsemane alongside of Ascension Mount. It is 
the complete surrender of our will-power and receiv- 
ing it back again as no longer ours. The subject 
expands in a threefold division. 

The nature of this will-power ; 

Its dangers when standing alone ; 

Its sublime resources when absorbed in the will 
divine. 

I. As to its' nature, we shall not get much help 
from the metaphysicians, but a great deal of light 
from our common experience. If you take a ball of 
snow and toss it into the stream, you will witness a 
rapid disintegration of the mass. It grows less and 
less till it assimilates to the surrounding substance 
and disappears. But if you take a piece of quartz, 
and throw that into the water, you observe that it 
sinks down to the sandy bottom and lies there. The 
waves beat over it year after year, and it loses no whit 



THE WILL-POWER. 39 

of its integrity, but remains an insoluble element 
in the waves. So again, plunge one person into the 
current of human society, and you will see by and 
by that society draws out of him all that was pos- 
itive and absorbs it. The stream washes out of him 
all his individuality, all that was specially his, and 
dissolves it in the current. His opinions, tastes, 
sentiments, prejudices, loves, and hates are assimi- 
lated and merged in the common mass. Put an- 
other, person in this same human current, and he 
never is merged in it, but preserves the same flinty 
outlines amid all the surgings of the waves. He is 
himself through all changes, and never disintegrated 
by the current. Now these contingencies do not 
depend upon our intellect, culture, or sensibility ; 
upon any amount of personal acquirements and ac- 
complishments. A man may have all these, and 
yet he may merge them in the current, and they 
may all play to its motions. It depends altogether 
upon the amount of will which he possesses, 
whether he is to fall into the stream as a flint or a 
snow-flake ; so that will may be defined as the 
power of self-cohesion — that which preserves a 
man's peculium amid the flux and reflux of society. 
A very weak intellect with a very strong will, can 
preserve a man's selfhood entire and even make 
it cut like a diamond ; and there may be a weak will 
and an intellect like Milton's ; yea, like one of Mil- 
ton's archangels, and yet it shall lie open to the in- 



40 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

vasion of every current, and be washed like a 
feather into the channel. 

Will, then, is the power of self-cohesion ; it is the 
power of resistance to the changes that take place 
outside of us. This extends even to the body. 
With some people the human system imbibes dis- 
ease . as the sponge imbibes water, and they suck in 
every lurking epidemic from the poisoned air. Oth- 
ers have the power of throwing it off, and it re- 
bounds from them as water does from an oil cover- 
ing. Dr. Kane was an invalid who travelled for 
health, and up in the ice regions, with the ther- 
mometer at yo° below zero, kept off the cold from 
the seat of life, while stronger men were yielding to 
its death-grasp. It is always the will-people — those 
who have the power of self-cohesion in largest meas- 
ure, who in these cases are apt to lead a charmed 
life in the midst of death. 

It is. the will that makes a man preeminently what 
he is. It is the power that sits back of all his other 
powers and keeps him an integer in the currents and 
whirls of life. Keep that strong, and all their wash- 
ings cannot even smooth off the edges of his char- 
acter. Let that be touched with weakness and he 
dissolves at once into the elements, and ceases to be 
an integral force in the universe. And here it is — 
just here, that the Gospel comes and lays its health- 
ful and healing hand. For if the will is gained, 
everything else is gained. If that be lost, every- 
thing is lost. 



THE WILL-POWER. 4 1 

II. And this leads us on to the second topic — 
What are its dangers and perversions when left to 
itself and standing alone. 

Its dangers are twofold. And the first is, that it 
degenerate into self-will or mere wilfulness, which 
is one of the worst perversions of the mere natural 
mind. It is manifest in two ways. It shows itself 
by sticking upon non-essentials while it leaves out 
the weightier matters of the law. It will go the 
whole lengths for the mint, the anise, and the 
cummin, and even sacrifice unto these justice, mercy, 
and faith. It would go to the stake merely to have 
its own way whether right or wrong ; and people 
generally talk the loudest about their consciences 
when they only mean their self-will. Moreover, 
when this power degenerates into wilfulness, its 
demonstrations are always those of passion and self- 
love, and even on the side of right it attempts to 
serve the altars of God with the fires of hell. A 
great many cases of martyrdom which men praise, 
and which have gone into the calendar of saints, will 
be found, I think, to be nothing else than sheer wil- 
fulness. No Gethsemane has preceded their Cal- 
vary ; no descent into the deeps of human weak- 
ness ; and therefore they rise no higher than mere 
bravery, wilful endurance, stoical obstinacy, and dra- 
matic virtue ; not to the sublime heights where they 
reappear in the clothings of Divine Omnipotence. 

But a worse danger than that besets this power 



42 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

when standing alone, and that is that it be broken 
down and destroyed. Oh, there is no sadder specta- 
cle in this world than that of a man whose will has 
been broken down ; who sees the right, who desires 
to follow it, and yet when he tries to do it finds him- 
self weaker than an infant at the breast. The intel- 
lect may be clear, and the sensibilities may be alive, 
and there may be all the accomplishments and 
adorning graces of the outward man, and all the ties 
of friendship may be twined about him, and all the 
motives of heaven and hell may lie upon him, and 
yet some demon has touched the will and broken it, 
and it is as if the mainspring had been taken out 
and all the wheels go whirring at random. There 
is no longer any self-cohesion for that man. He is 
at the mercy of every temptation that comes, and 
" his limed soul when struggling to be free is more 
engaged." " I have a large fortune," said a man to 
a temperance agent, " but tell me how I can pass 
that dram-shop without going in and I will give you 
the whole of it." And here is where sin does its 
deadliest mischief, and herein lies all the bondage of 
evil habit. Every repetition of the sin makes the 
will weaker, till finally its power of volition is gone 
forever. 

There was once a man whose intellect was bur- 
nished to a most unwonted brightness, as fervid a 
genius as our American culture ever evolved. But 
he gave himself to the tempter once and again, and 



THE WILL-POWER. 43 

before he knew it this awful power of will was drawn 
clean out of him, and he fell and lay prone ; and 
then no strengthening angel could lift him up, for 
there was nothing to take hold of. He fell, and the 
knell that sounded over him was like his own song 
of the bells : — 

" Iron bells ! 
Every sound that floats 
From the rust within their throats 

Is a groan." 

But I need not have gone so far, nor have recited 
an extreme case like this. The reason everywhere 
why virtue is so feeble is because the will is weak 
and wayward. All that class of persons that halt 
between Christ and the world, and do not know to 
whom they belong themselves, are people whose 
wills have been demagnetized and hence all their 
weakness and inefficiency. There is no decision in 
religion where this is the case, no self -consecration 
to duty, but a passive floating along as circumstance 
or accident or pleasure may direct the way. They 
are creatures of accident or creatures of society, 
for the sole reason that the will is weak ; for when 
the will is weak the world has us in its power, and 
a full grown manhood or womanhood is an impossi- 
ble attainment. 

III. All the dangers I have described we avoid 
when the human will is merged and lost in the 
Divine. Two things are essential to this, the sur- 



44 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

render of all things, and receiving them back again 
as no longer ours. The former is the hardest thing 
the Christian has to do. It is the Gethsemane 
through which he passes on his way to Mount 
Ascension. It is the real Lenten season, and un- 
less his forty days' fastings betoken this, they are 
nothing but dietary rules, and will be followed by 
no Easter morning. I fear there is not much of 
this giving up without some secret reservations. 
These secret reservations are the source of all your 
halting and weakness. One person has some indo- 
lent habit to indulge, another has gains accumulat- 
ing by sinful traffic or by putting things the best 
side out ; another has wordly vanities to support, 
and so charity and mercy must beg and starve ; 
another has the blandishments of private friendship 
which would be perilled by a whole confession and 
consecration ; another has his patrons to please, and 
the popular will which he must court and follow 
after ; another dreads the danger of non-conformity 
with the scribes and pharisees ; another lives only 
in the senses, and can see nothing to live for but 
animal enjoyments, and no soul in himself or any 
one else to be cared for and saved ; and so these 
persons do not cast themselves without reserve 
upon the eternal and all-perfect law. But when my 
opinions, my pleasures, my gains, my righteousness, 
and all that makes up my personality as a responsi- 
ble being, are brought in entire surrender to the 



THE WILL-POWER. 45 

Divine will and then received back again, a higher 
will than mine sways me henceforth, as the current 
sways the lily on its bosom. To make us do this 
the whole plan of Providence is arranged. It is to 
break down wilfulness, that the Divine will-power 
may take its place, and to this end sometimes He 
smites us blow after blow, before He can crush it 
down. Sometimes it takes years to break it, and 
sometimes like an anvil it grows harder under the 
strokes. Very often the spirit is broken when the 
will is not given up at all. Very often, too, the will 
is weakly given up to a fellow mortal, but no whit of 
it surrendered to God. Very often it yields to the 
tempter when it will not yield to the Lord, and be- 
comes weak as a palsied limb. But when it does 
yield to Him, perfectly, and without any reserve, 
another will is received in its place. It is not mine, 
and I know in my deepest consciousness that it is 
God moved into the soul, and seeking to be realized 
in all my speech and actions. There it is always 
present, and I can feel its motions and its thrills of 
pleasure or of pain. The Christian who has once 
given up all things and received them back, has an 
experience answering somewhat to that of the Mas- 
ter himself. "All thine are mine, and mine are 
thine, and thou art glorified in them." Two things 
immediately follow. First, wilfulness, which is but 
a poor aping of conscientiousness, immediately dis- 
appears. In things merely personal and non-essen- 



46 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

tial, we can be as pliant and yielding as a little child. 
And here comes in the full scope and exercise of all 
that class of virtues which worldly men sometimes 
mistake for pusillanimity, — meekness, gentleness, 
deference, and the sweet charities and amenities of 
life. These come as the manifestations of the Divine 
within us, just as his great power around us runs 
down into the smallest channels, and hangs leaves 
and blossoms on the smallest stems, and threads 
them with pencillings finer than the artist can copy. 
Hence the contradictions of the Christian charac- 
ter are apparent and not real. Under the most of 
yielding and gentleness and many-sidedness, which 
the Apostle describes as " all things to all men," the 
will-determinations may be the strongest and most 
absolute. Wilfulness runs into obstinacy on things 
indifferent. The will, absorbed in the Divine, can 
yield as God yields, bending to occasions and 
changes with myriad-minded goodness, because 
there is an unchanging purpose within the whole. 
From our reception of the Divine will we bend with 
gentle adaptations to the peace, the comfort, and 
even the whims and caprices of our fellows, so far 
as the unchanging purpose is not hurt nor compro- 
mised. But within the non-essential and in things 
that pertain to justice, mercy, and essential truth, we 
are made strong in God's Omnipotence. God is 
omnipotent in and through us, for his will is done 
on earth as it is in heaven. Hence the Gospel con- 



THE WILL-POWER. 47 

trasts. In the depths of humiliation, " Not my will 
but thine ; " in the heights of exaltation, " All power 
is given me in heaven and on the earth." 

There is only one remedy for those whose will is 
wayward or whose power of virtue is broken down. 
Outward props will not avail. Legal restraints and 
prudential motives will not avail. These have been 
tried again and again, and in such cases always in 
vain. There is no human help when the awful 
power of will has been undermined, except as human 
help may be a guide to something higher than itself. 
But there is Divine help, and out of it on men once 
lying prone and helpless have been wrought the 
greatest miracles on record. Augustine was gone 
clean down in vice when God laid hold of him and 
lifted him up and put a new will into him, and he 
stands like a peak of granite for the centuries to date 
from. So the weakest will of the most wayward 
among you, if you would give it up to Him without 
reservations, would be returned to you infrangible 
as adamant. But to gain this you must go down 
with Jesus into the shades of Gethsemane, and 
watch with Him and suffer with Him where self lies 
prone and bleeding, till its surrender is complete and 
the angel's face beams through the shadows from 
above. And then the shadows of the Lenten days 
are fringed already with the Ascension glories. 



PEACE, BE STILL. 



'T is not, my God, thy chastening hand, 

'T is not the pain I bear, 
That hangs upon my drooping heart 

This heavy load of care. 

But myriads move on winged feet 

Made swift to do thy will, 
While thy dread silence on me falls, 

Thy mandate — Peace, be still. 

All Nature's harps, in endless ranks, 
By thy sweet breath are stirred ; 

And through my prison windows float 
The sounds of breeze and bird. 

Then up and up through golden air, 
Beyond Time's ebb and flow, 

I see the throngs, who cast their crowns, 
In white robes bending low. 

They come and go on flashing wings, 

For all thine errands fleet ; 
While here, thy hand is on my lips, 

Thy chains are on my feet. 

Thus from my bed of chronic pain 
I prayed — " O Lord, how long ! " 
4 



50 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

Pining to reap the harvest fields 
And sing the harvest song. 

And in the hush of silence falls 
This answer to my prayer, — 
" What gave those throngs their flashing wings, 
Whence come the robes they wear ? 

" Ere yet by word or deed or song 
Made swift to do my will, 
They learned it in the trial-hour 
Beneath my — Peace, be still ! 

" And He who walked the garden shades 
The best beloved Son, 
Prayed, ere the strengthening angel came — 
' Thy will, not mine, be done ! ' " 



IV. 

CALVARY. 

(GOOD FRIDAY.) 

John xii. 32. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
draw all men unto me. This He said, signifying what 
death He should die. 

r I ^HE fundamental facts on which the whole 
-*■ Christian system rests are ranged into a series ; 
each one of which necessitates all the rest. The 
birth of Christ, his mission, his miracles, his death, 
his resurrection, his ascension, his coming again as 
the Paraclete, will be found so connected in the nar- 
ratives of the New Testament that you cannot take 
out one without impairing the significance of all. 
For example, if you regard his death as the death of 
any other man, or of a common martyr, his resur- 
rection becomes less credible and significant ; and 
all that strain of prophecy which runs through his 
teachings, forecasting his death and resurrection as 
included in a great plan of human salvation, has no 
meaning at all. Hence when one of the facts of this 
divine series has been expunged, the rest are pretty 
sure to follow in logical order, until Christianity is 
reduced to a mere system of natural religion. If 



52 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

Jesus was born as other men, why should He not die 
as other men ; and if He died as other men, why 
should not his resurrection be like that of other men, 
and why should He come again as Spirit and Com- 
forter ? But let all these facts be retained and their 
relation to each other studied and pondered, and it is 
not long before a system of divine truth rises on 
our faith, flinging its light over the mysteries of 
two worlds and lighting up the darkness of the 
grave. 

You know how much meaning in the New Testa- 
ment gathers and centres about the cross of Christ. 
His death is made a moral and spiritual necessity in 
the Providence of God. He is the Lamb slain from 
the foundation of the world. Hence all through his 
ministry Jesus speaks of " his hour." His enemies 
were powerless to touch his life till his hour had 
come. And when his hour was come He says, " For 
this was I born and for this cause came I into the 
world." And again, " If I be lifted up, I will draw 
all men unto me." 

In unfolding so great a subject as the significance 
of the cross of Christ, we must not fall into the error 
of making it sole and exclusive ; as if the whole 
work of redemption were concentrated here. In 
that way we should fling disparagement on the other 
facts of the Gospel history. On the other hand, if 
we may enter aright into the meaning of this great 
sacrifice., all those other facts will be seen in the 



CALVARY. 53 

light of it, and the whole system of Christian faith 
appear in new consistency and beauty. 

I. First, then, we say, that the cross is an expres- 
sion out of profounder depths of the Divine Love 
than the world had ever known before or since. 
The Jew only saw God apart and alone in his awful 
justice. He only knew God set over against man in 
fearful antagonism, — God in his dazzling holiness, 
man in his sin and his uncleanness liable to be in- 
vaded with avenging thunders. No human wit 
would have imagined the way in which this fearful 
gulf was to be bridged over. The idea of the Divine 
coming over to us — taking upon itself our human 
burdens of sin and suffering — would have entered 
into no human scheme of reconciliation. And yet 
this is the great truth daily brought home to us in 
the cross of Christ. It need not be embarrassed by 
any subtile questions about the union of the Father 
and the Son. " God so loved the world that He gave 
his only begotten Son ; " and " He was in Him recon- 
ciling the world unto Himself." The Divine Justice 
in the Christian Gospel becomes simply the form and 
aspect of the Divine Goodness, moulding it and keep- 
ing it from missing its mark. Sacrifice means the 
giving of one's self away for the good of others, and 
the sacrifice of Christ is called " complete " because 
nothing was kept back, and it is doubly significant 
because the love of the Father is imaged and shown 
forth in the sacrifice of the Son. The Son does not 



54 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

come to ward off the Father s wrath or deflect his 
thunderbolts, but to make new channels through 
which the Father's love could find its way to the 
hearts of men. It is the Divine Love, therefore, 
coming into the world anew through the only 
begotten Son, — love which delights to give itself 
away, stops at no suffering, but sends out nerves 
into every one's condition and draws up a world's 
agony into its own heart. Hence while it is capable 
of the heights of rapture it is capable also of the in- 
finite depths of sorrow. The Divine Compassion as 
revealed in Jesus becomes altogether personal, and if 
He incarnates and represents the Divine nature as 
He claims to do, then the Father is not an awfully 
impassive Being away off beyond the stars, but a 
present Redeemer bearing our griefs and sorrows on 
his tenderest feeling every hour. You have looked, 
I presume, on a group of statuary which represents a 
wife kneeling over the form of her dead soldier, her 
countenance raised in strange blendings of raptured 
devotion and broken-hearted anguish, all expressed 
in the prayer, " O God I give him to his country 
and to thee." These images of finite human affec- 
tion will give us some conception of what it was for 
the Father to give his only begotten Son, and they 
will make it very easy to understand why the sorrow 
folded in the shadows of Gethsemane appears un- 
like the sufferings of commom martyrdom, because 
it gives us gleams of an infinite compassion which 



CALVARY. 55 

has taken on its feeling the sins and sufferings of a 
race. 

What a scheme of salvation we should have 
planned out, as fitted for an Almighty Being to 
adopt ! We should have called Him down from 
heaven, probably on the car of his Omnipotence, 
slaying the wicked, and taking up the saints into 
Paradise. That was the Messiah which men looked 
for, and which some look for yet. And yet He came 
concealing his glory, holding in his power, sinking 
himself in our condition, hiding himself under our 
poverty and wretchedness out of tender regard for 
our moral freedom, so as to win his way into the 
soul by the most of love and the least of fear. So 
then the cross on Calvary shows what a cross there 
was in the Divine Love, which consented to hide 
its power but to halve the anguish, in order to find 
our fallen humanity and lift it up to the Divine Em- 
brace. 

II. There is all this in the cross of Christ, and of 
consequence there is another truth which it holds 
aloft, and which it preaches every day to the world. 
It is the depth and the malignity of human sinful- 
ness. There is only one step in the argument 
which shows how vast is the moral ruin which re- 
quires such a reconstruction as this. If you say sin 
is only a superficial matter — only a wrinkling of 
the rind and not a disease that lies at the core — 
you will easily think that God would not be at much 



56 .SERMONS AND SONGS. 

pains about it. He would let it alone, and let it 
work itself off in the natural unfoldings of our 
manhood, just as the bark peels off in the growth 
of the tree. And then to accommodatp all things 
to such a conception, you will discharge Christianity 
of all its supernatural meaning. The blood of the 
covenant is a common thing, and the death of 
Christ is the death of a common man. And then 
those words, Selfishness, and Hate, and Pride, and 
Revenge, and Lust, and Cruelty, and love of Rule, 
which enter into the idea of sin, and make it up, 
will not express to you evils that take hold of the 
immortal nature and blight it. They only mar it 
a little on the outside, will pass off with a little 
more development, and without repentance or humil- 
iation. Restore the Gospel to its integrity and 
its full orbed power, and how vastly different do all 
these things appear ! Let the incarnation be indeed 
the Word made flesh ; the death on Calvary not 
the untimely end of a defeated Jewish Reformer, 
but the Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
world, and then the question comes home at once, 
What eternal interests were at stake, requiring such 
a descent of the Divine Love into the depths of our 
human woe ? We shall easily see that it was no 
speck on the surface of humanity, but a plague-spot 
at the heart, that was to be removed. Would all 
this costly sacrifice be made — this gift of the Son of 
God to go down into the profound of sorrow and 






CALVARY. 57 

suffering — merely for the removal of some super- 
ficial evil, which the race would outgrow of itself, 
and not rather of one that lay at the Heart, like a 
canker, and threatened ruin to the whole ? Not 
alone then the depths of the Divine Love for man, 
but the depths of the Divine Hate towards sin — 
the only thing that perils his eternal peace, is shad- 
owed forth on Calvary, and makes us cease to won- 
der almost at the darkness that came down and 
involved the sacrifice. 

There is something which delights the imagina- 
tion in the ministry of angels. Through the old dis- 
pensation they led on the chosen people, and in all 
ages of the world such ministries have inspired its 
childlike faith. So they might have come, never 
putting on our garments of mortality ; beckoning 
to the skies, but never touching the earth them- 
selves to be soiled by it. So it might have been, if 
men only needed teaching and beckoning upward. 
But there was One who came down into our condi- 
tion, wrapped the garments of our infancy and man- 
hood about Him that He might be put in communion 
therewith and thrill them with life and energy ; and 
He becomes not teacher only, but Redeemer ; not 
a guide merely to beckon, but a Saviour to quicken 
and regenerate ; and so when St. John draws the 
veil and gives us gleams of the ritual of heaven, it 
is of one who has helped us by sharing our whole 
human experience that He might adapt the Divine 



58 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

Help to it, and to whom worship is always rendered 
under the symbol of suffering and sacrifice. 

It is a doctrine, you know, of some branches of the 
modern Church, that God himself in the person of 
Christ, suffered as a substitute for man, and so his 
death becomes the sole condition of forgiveness. 
Do not denounce the doctrine till you first eliminate, 
what is false from it, and then take home the truth ; 
for it has melted the iron out of many a sinful soul, 
and given it peace in believing. It is not the sup- 
posed commercial transfer of our sins to Christ, and 
his merits to us that gives the peace. It is the 
thought that Christ represents here the infinite 
Mercy ; that God himself can come over to us, and 
make our case his own ; that He so hates the evil 
that spreads canker through the tenderest places 
of the heart, that He will take the burden of it upon 
himself ; that He will let our hardness and impeni- 
tence put stabs into his wounded love before He 
will let us go ; that not his Fatherhood alone, on 
the peaks of heaven, but his humanity, brought 
nigh and inserted in our lowly condition, is given 
in sacrifice for us every hour ; it is this that will 
make you hate your sin, if anything will, and let 
the heart melt in repentance, and the Divine Grace 
clear its stains out of you in showers of effacing 
rain. 

III. Again we look to the cross of Christ to get 
some just estimate of the worth and grandeur of 



CALVARY. 59 

human nature. We are very apt to fall into mere 
declamation on this head. The greatness of human 
nature implies a twofold capacity — susceptibilities 
for progress and enjoyment, and susceptibilities for 
degradation and suffering. The possible heights of 
its exaltation measure the possible depths of its 
downfall. Natures that are small and narrow and 
low down, have these susceptibilities in slight de- 
gree. They can neither rise nor sink very far. But 
all those provisions for human salvation which we 
call supernatural, are so many testimonies to the 
endless value of the human soul. You begin to see 
the worth of a thing when you see how much it 
costs to buy it or redeem it. Seeing only the sur- 
face of men, liable only to physical evils and physi- 
cal death, all the supernatural agencies of the New 
Testament are utterly incredible. Would God come 
into the world in this wise, giving over such a Being 
as Jesus Christ to the agonies of the cross, to save 
an insect of to-day from a little more or a little less 
of physical evil ? How great are the means and how 
insignificant is the end ! How costly the price and 
how poor in comparison is the thing purchased ! 
But the cross proclaims forever that physical suffer- 
ing, even in the person of God's only Son, is to be 
reckoned of less account, where a spiritual and 
eternal good can be achieved by it. Expunge the 
supernatural from Christianity, make its Christ a 
common man, and his cross a human misfortune, 



60 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

and we tend by inevitable logic to that view of hu- 
man nature which merges it in mere animal exist- 
ence. But the moment we understand that man 
neither enjoys nor suffers like an animal, that the 
pleasures and pains of sense are hardly worthy of a 
moment's thought, compared with those pleasures or 
pains that are to fill up the measure of its capacities 
forever ; the moment we understand all this, the 
grand array of means provided in the Christian 
Gospel to lift man up and save him become the log- 
ical necessities of the Divine Providence. The 
mystery of the cross clears away, and the Great 
Sacrifice is no waste of treasure and blood. We 
wonder not that the heavens should bend down to 
the earth, and break into its affairs, when we see that 
this world with all its trappings could not be given 
in exchange for a human soul. So the cross 
preaches to us the love of God as a personal love ; 
the depth of ruin into which man is plunged by 
sin ; and the worth and grandeur of human nature 
in its unmeasured capacities for rising or falling, for 
bliss or for suffering. 

IV. But there is another truth which comes home 
to us as preached by the cross of Christ. It clears 
away the mystery of death, for it shows death as 
the reverse side of resurrection. Death, as we learn 
it here, is not an isolated fact in human experience, 
and resurrection another isolated fact. Death is 
only the hither side of one great fact — the waning of 



CALVARY. 6 1 

our mortal being, that the immortal being may have 
freedom and enlargement. This waxes as the other 
wanes. How conspicuous is the fact in the last 
days of our Saviours earthly life ! More and more 
does the mortal body appear as the mere foliage of 
the Divine and immortal being, the foliage lit up 
with wondrous transfigurations from the Divine man 
within who could not be touched by the spear and 
the nails. On the very eve of crucifixion — speak- 
ing out of this divine consciousness — we are told, 
" In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit and said, Now 
is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in 
Him." That has always seemed to me an instance 
of the highest moral sublime. The cross, just be- 
fore, but the way to " the glorification of the Son of 
Man." And what a light from this Exemplar is 
flung over all our death-scenes and Gethsemanes, 
which have been so multiplied of late and sent sor- 
row and anguish into so many homes ! Ties must 
break and hearts must bleed and death will come by 
sudden violence until men grow wiser and better. 
At the same time let the light that streams from the 
cross be turned full upon our vales of sorrow and 
our Calvaries of suffering, and we shall remember 
that death is only the hither side of resurrection 
unto life, and that the darkest midnights are broken 
by the dawn of the Easter mornings. 

Men pass in long processions, sometimes in ag- 
onized groups and companies, into the freezing 



62 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

shadows of night ; and how many a heart to-day is 
broken and bleeding because its treasures have been 
snatched away by sudden havoc and ruin. 1 The 
cross is the symbol which hangs aloft over all the 
wrecks of our slaughtered humanity ; the symbol of 
a love which drew all that havoc and agony up into 
its own experience, in order to show it the reverse 
side of resurrection and immortality. Our human 
mortality is the cloud which hangs between us and 
the glory just beyond ; the cloud thick and heavy 
until the Christ turned it into white wreaths which 
only temper to our condition the ardent mercies 
of the Lord. Such is the fourfold meaning of the 
cross and such the light streaming from it to-day. 

There is one point of application which the sub- 
ject urges upon you. It rebukes our sleepy indif- 
ference and dull consciousness of the powers that 
slumber within us. Would that we might see the 
worth of human nature as God sees it who has ex- 
pended so much to cleanse and save it. If we con- 
sidered the vast possibilities for good or evil, for 
sorrow or joy, which are wrapped up within us and 
are slumbering there ; there could be no such thing 
as religious insensibility. We should be awake to 
the mighty issues of this probation now and here. 
It is quite conceivable that when these capacities 

1 This sermon was preached soon after one of the most fatal steam- 
boat disasters. 



CALVARY. 63 

are all developed and filled up, having cast oft the 
coverings and clogs of earth, an hour of suffering 
will outweigh all its physical pains, and an hour of 
joy all its earth-born pleasures. And the Son of 
Man is lifted up not by his death alone, yea rather 
through that by his resurrection and coming again 
in Spirit that He may draw you to himself. For not 
by the cross is He lifted up as an object for our pity- 
ing gaze, but by this He is raised above all the cen- 
turies to his place of power, that our gaze upon Him 
by an act of faith may bring healing and cleansing 
mercy. 



THE TWISTED THORN. 

Night hath shut the prisoner in, 
Night of terror, night of sin ; 
Vain for light my eyeballs roll, 
Darkly here I dwell in dole ; 
On my couch I plain and mourn, 
Bleeding with the twisted thorn. 

What arises dark and still ? 
Oh, 't is Calvary's awful hill ! 
Lo, the drooping sufferer there ! 
Lo, the unprevailing prayer ! 
Lo, the temples pierced and torn, 
Bleeding with the twisted thorn ! 

What arises clear and still ? 
'T is Ascension's sacred hill ! 
See the rifted clouds retire, 
Flaming with the fleecy fire, 
Through them see a form upborne - 
He who wore the twisted thorn ! 

What is that I see afar ? 

'T is the blinking of a star ; 

'T is Orion ! 'tis the Sun ! 

'T is the Conqueror coming on, 

Riding through the gates of Morn, 

He who wore the twisted thorn. 

• 5 



66 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

Look ye up to Calvary's hill, 
Ye who bear the pains of ill ; 
Look ye towards Ascension Mount, 
Ye who drink the bitter fount ; 
Look ye towards the gates of Morn, 
Ye who wear the twisted thorn ! 



V. 
RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 

(EASTER.) 

Acts i. 9. While they beheld, He was taken up; and a cloud 
received Hi?n out of their sight. 

LUKE, beyond all reasonable question, is the 
author of the book of Acts, and he reports the 
scene of our Saviour's ascension evidently from the 
testimony of eye-witnesses. The scene as described 
could not have been on the earth but beyond the 
bourne of mortality. It was in the spirit-world, of 
which for the time these disciples had open cog- 
nizance ; but that ceasing, " a cloud " — this cloud 
of mortality — hung between them and the risen 
Saviour. The " two men in white apparel," or the 
angels who appear upon the scene, assure the aston- 
ished disciples that they will see Jesus come again 
in like manner as they have seen Him go away. 
How He went away some of the disciples seem not 
to have understood, and so they mistook the manner 
of his coming again. It is not the first instance in 
which the high utterances which have come down 
out of heaven have been taken in a lower and 



68 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

grosser sense than that in which they were made. 
From these and similar declarations made by our 
Lord himself pertaining to his second coming, prob- 
ably the notion originated among the early disciples, 
of a second coming of Christ upon the earth 
through the clouds of the air. 

What are we to understand by the ascension of 
Christ ? Simply and only his resurrection consum- 
mated and complete. It cannot be necessary to 
argue with any rational mind, that the New Testa- 
ment writers do not mean an ascent through space 
into the sky. They mean that having put off all the 
remnants of mortality which clung to Him from the 
tomb, He ascended into the sphere of celestial and 
divine being which mortal eyes cannot look upon, 
and so in the flesh they saw Him no more. Hence- 
forth He will appear out of heaven only in like man- 
ner as they saw Him go into it. 

The death and ascension, or complete resurrection, 
of Christ are the two facts which mainly occupy our 
attention as we contemplate the closing scenes in the 
life of Jesus. One is the human and finite, the other 
is the divine side of that wondrous life. We are 
apt to get a very narrow view of these two facts that 
very much tames down their significance. By the 
death of Christ is not meant merely his expiration 
on Calvary. By the resurrection and ascension are 
not meant merely the reanimation of the corpse in 
Joseph's tomb, much less going up into the air from 



RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 69 

Ascension Mount By no means. Bear in mind 
that there was in Him the union of our tempted, suf- 
fering, dying humanity, with the all-revealing and in- 
dwelling divinity. At first the suffering human nat- 
ure is dominant and conspicuous. He is a man of 
sorrows ; He hath not where to lay his head ; He 
bends under the weight of temptation that lies 
against Him with its terrible load. But within all 
this the divinity gleams, at first faintly, then more 
openly, then with transfiguring power and splendor. 
This waxes and the other wanes. At length the 
mortal suffering nature is expelled and the divine 
man rises clear of it into his tranquil and unclouded 
noon. In the first stages a man of sorrows and ac- 
quainted with grief. In the last stage is the trium- 
phal strain, " All power is given me in heaven and 
upon the earth." 

Now we observe that the first process — the pass- 
ing away of the encumbering and suffering humanity, 
is called our Lord's death. The other and the reverse 
process, the emergence out of it of the half-con- 
cealed Divinity to its meridian power, is called the 
Lord's ascension. One kept time with the other. 
That was a daily death as a means of daily rising, 
till there was nothing left to be excluded, and the 
whole Divine man ascends before us and above us 
as the image of the invisible God. 

That I do not give too broad a rendering to these 
two inverse terms of the Gospel you will be abun- 



yo SERMONS AND SONGS. 

dantly satisfied if you examine and collate the pas- 
sages where they occur. They are given always as 
the exact image of our own spiritual progress and 
enlargement. We rise and ascend with Him only as 
we die with Him. The self-denials and the conflicts 
which He calls taking up the cross daily, the temp- 
tation scenes, the Gethsemanes and the Calvarys 
alike ; these are included under this term, dying with 
Christ. And then the lower, the tempted nature, 
wanes till it disappears, and the angel-power from 
within unfolds and ascends free of it ; and this is 
rising with Christ. 

And you will see, I think, at once why the ascen- 
sion of Christ is the fact which lies at the very heart 
of the Gospel and is the hiding-place of its power. 
For it was only by his ascension that He came spirit- 
ually to his Church and comes to it now in showers 
of grace and love. And you will see the poverty 
and meagreness of the theologies which gather up 
the chief meaning of our Saviour's mission in those 
six hours of physical suffering. Not so Paul. "If 
Christ be not risen your faith is vain, ye are yet in 
your sins." And he announces himself a witness of 
this rising. But how a witness ? He never saw 
Christ in the flesh that we know of. He was not at 
the tomb that great Sabbath morning. He met 
Christ for the first time, on his way to Damascus, 
breaking upon him out of the glories of the Syrian 
sky. Such being the broad significance of these 



RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION J I 

two leading facts of the Gospel history, let us now 
proceed to turn the light of the great truth which is 
here involved upon our own lowly and suffering 
state. For the great Exemplar is placed before us 
to fling illustration over all our mortal condition. 
Standing on Mount Ascension we shall see revealed 
more clearly the hopes of man and the possibilities 
that sleep within us. If we are planted together in 
the likeness of his death we shall be also in the like- 
ness of his resurrection. Death and ascension ! 
These two are the leading facts of the Christian 
probation and experience as we follow the divine 
footsteps. There is not in us the same "fullness 
of the Godhead" which Christ had, but there is in 
us the heavenly man clogged and concealed under 
the earthly, and one waxes as the other wanes. 

I. See this first in our most external changes. 
You observe that there is nothing fixed here, and 
that even our houses and homes are but as tents 
which are pitched for a day and a night upon the 
plain. Now you will find generally that even this 
economy of temporal change is necessitated by 
deeper changes and growths within us. We build 
our habitations ; we gather our families about us as 
the nestling places of our affections ; nay, even the 
stones and the trees and the shrubbery have grown 
into us and become almost a part of our being, for 
the heart's tendrils have gone op and laid their 
clasp upon them all. It seemed at first that we were 



72 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

to stay there in one place forever. But we find at 
length we had exhausted all it had to give us as a 
means of life's work, discipline and duty. There is 
a growing maladjustment of what is around us to 
what is within us. We must gird up ourselves and 
rend off the fastenings of the heart, and the former 
things must pass away. So it is when the young 
man shuts off the scene of his boyhood, its fields, 
brooks, orchards, and groves, for a new plunge into 
the world. So it is when the young woman foregoes 
the ties of girlhood for a new and more sacred vow. 
The spot where we had taken root, where we had 
loved with our young loves and dreamed our waking 
dreams, and where we were held by all the twinings 
of the heart, has exhausted its resources upon us. 
We must pluck up the roots of our old life and turn 
away from its scenery forever. So it is all through 
this world with its enlarging responsibilities. We 
must forego the past, ofttimes with ties that bleed 
where they break, but exscinding the old is the stern 
condition of our enlargement. We may remain 
where we are and let the moss and the mould gather 
upon us ; but if we would avoid all this we must 
rend the heart's claspings from loved and familiar 
things and let them go out again. Our very sur- 
roundings as we pass out of them become the shed- 
dings of the soul. Our most external life then gives 
us this image of our death to the old, and ascension 
out of it. 



RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. J$ 

But changes more inward and spiritual are alsc 
represented. The regeneration of the individual finds 
its perfect image in the resurrection and ascension 
of Christ. Perhaps we commence our Christian 
course with the persuasion that all is smooth and 
even, that human nature is only to be unfolded 
like a flower, that development is all we need. The 
child is born perfectly pure, we thought, and needs 
only to grow in stature and grow in grace. We very 
soon find out our mistake. We very soon find that 
there is an old carnal man to be put off before the 
angel can be unfolded from within. There is lust 
and covetousness and bad temper, and a whole brood 
of hereditary evils that must be resisted and slain, 
before the heavenly life comes into the conscious- 
ness, long before it unfolds with perfect clearness. 

We have come to use the word habits to describe 
the garments that we wear. It describes better the 
investiture of our souls. Habits are simply petrified 
loves. We love a certain mode of living. We get 
used to it and cannot get out of its ruts and grooves. 
We love certain pleasures and gratifications ; we 
come to depend upon them and cannot do without 
them. We love ease. It settles down into a fixed 
habit of indolence, and we cannot without great 
effort break away from our old sleepy rounds of 
thought and practice. In this way a great many 
persons before life is half through get ironed into 
one set of opinions, usages, and customs ; habits of 



74 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

speech, of thought, and of living. And that is the 
way that this world gets hold of them with grap- 
pling hooks and makes them grow old before their 
time. Old age is simply the external man, both the 
body and the outward mind growing stiff and hard 
and shutting in the soul under the iron clamps of 
custom. Some people get ironed in at thirty, most 
at forty ; and unless Christ has touched their souls, 
at fifty they are clean gone in religious indifference 
or theologic petrefactions. Sometimes these people 
are converted to Christ. But it is by revolution not 
by growth in grace ; the Divine Power coming 
within with so much violence that the outward 
natural man is shivered in pieces. 

But a Christian life, orderly and heavenly, is a per- 
petual warfare against these creeping layers of 
worldliness and evil custom that the life within may 
uplift them and be kept in everlasting freshness and 
youth. " If we have been planted together in the 
likeness of His death we shall be also in the likeness 
of His resurrection." It is a life of daily denials and 
renunciations, that the spirit of Christ may flow into 
them and fill them out with himself. How beautiful 
is such a life : old things always passing away, the 
old. crumbling Adam constantly put off and the 
angel taking its place ! Thus those who follow the 
Lord Jesus like little children are always renewing 
their youth and putting on the beauty of their prime. 
It is daily death in order to a daily resurrection. It 



RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 75 

is rising from the dead every hour and walking in 
newness of life. It is following Him in the regenera- 
tion, that as the finite and tempted humanity waned 
and disappeared till the Divine Man broke unclouded 
upon the world, ~u our selfish nature becomes 
weaker till it dies, and the strong angel disencum- 
bered walks free of it in the likeness of the Lord's 
resurrection, and rejoices in the blessed Easter days 
of renewal and glory. 

All human progress looks to Christ as its image 
and representation. The progress of the race is not 
a continuous ascent, but a decay and a resurrection. 
When Christ appeared the race was apparently in 
ruins. Christianity was not a progress, but an emer- 
gence out of death and the tomb. It was the up- 
lifting and heaving off of whole ages of effete 
religion, vast piles of superstition and of dead letter, 
and a Divine form of religion coming forth in its 
place. The death and resurrection of Christ be- 
come the perfect type of the decay and renovation 
of the humanity which He assumed and which He 
came to save. The race is a collective man and 
passes through the stages of growth and decay. The 
eastern mythologies are the dead letter of what once 
was a living religion. The beautiful mythology of 
Greece is the darkened symbol it may be of a primi- 
tive revelation to man. In every form of civilization 
— Greek, Roman, Egyptian, or Oriental, we have the 
history of a rise, decline, and fall. Christianity is 



76 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

simply a putting off of the old body and death robes 
that the new body may emerge out of them. Thus the 
Christ emerging with conquering strength out of the 
finite and the earthly, one waxing as the other 
waned, is a divine picture of all humanity, decaying 
and ascending out of decay till the redemption of the 
race on earth becomes complete and the prophecy is 
fulfilled, — " Behold I create all things new ! " 

But the subject has an application which affects 
us individually and vitally. Over the whole field of 
natural death a light comes down from Ascension 
Mount ; for there is openly disclosed to us all that 
is concealed under the vesture of mortal decay. It 
is solemn, but hardly mysterious when saintly old 
age passes on ; and if the generations went in un- 
broken ranks death would cast no shadow that 
would trouble us, the cloud on the thither side would 
be so completely illumined. When our faculties 
begin to fold in we begin to die to this world. 
Gently they are folded in sometimes one after an- 
other ; sense, and memory, and reason, and , at last 
consciousness — the book of life all closed and sealed 
and laid away, its contents to outward appearance 
blurred or blotted out. But they are not blotted out. 
They are folded in to be kept more securely, and to 
be opened again leaf after leaf that they may have 
a resetting and embodiment where decay and death 
have no longer any control. Thus growing old is a 
preparation for growing young again ; yea, age only 



RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 77 

touches the outward man that the man within, 
more orderly and securely, may have a clear unfold- 
ing and ascension and reinvestiture on a field of 
endless progress and enlargement. But whether old 
or young, God never calls away his servants till 
there is a vacant place elsewhere for them to fill ; 
and when the physical life is subordinated to the 
moral and spiritual, how small is the difference 
whether the soul's release from it be in age or in 
youth or in the strength of manhood ! Ever and 
everywhere the life that is pure and heavenly is the 
surrender of that which is lower to the call and the 
needs of that which is higher ; of that which is outer 
and more transient to that which is essential and 
eternal. 

These truths come home to us with special power 
to-day after a period of great sacrifice, in which the 
Beauty of our Israel has been slain in its high 
places, and we turn the light from Ascension Mount 
on the Golgothas of the battle-field. Some of rare 
gifts and power for good, of our own denomination, 
and from among yourselves, have joined the long 
procession of martyrs. They have followed in the 
path of the Great Sacrifice for humanity. Let us 
look well to it, that we be found in this great pro- 
cession ; for living or dying, life truly consecrated is 
a sacrifice and offering unto God. What a privilege, 
to march in this procession in which prophets and 
martyrs and noble men and women have walked, 



?8 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

and are walking now, at the head of whom is the 
Christ, breathing his life through all and bidding 
our step keep time with his ! And how animating 
the thought, that as the heavens fill up and bend over 
us the more freely and vitally their life and spirit 
pass into our human affairs and make our lowly 
service divine. Before we reach the meridian of our 
life's little day, those who started together have 
parted company and most of them are on the other 
side. Young men and women, matrons who had 
watched and worked with us, strong men who bore 
the heat and burden of the day, have failed from 
earth, though not from the grand company yet 
strong and active to do the divine will. " We do 
not wish them back again," you say, but you say it 
mechanically ; for the lips say it, not the heart. We 
do wish them back for earth needs all their activ- 
ities and energies, and hearts that have once beat 
together cannot be sundered without the sense of 
heart-breaking and of baffled sympathies and affec- 
tions which yearn for the same unison again. And 
these affections are mightily prophetic ; for a voice 
from them comes out of the very deeps of human 
nature, assuring us that the veil of mortality is too 
thin and unsubstantial to keep those apart who are 
spiritually one in the grand, aims and purposes of 
existence, and in doing the will of Him who unites 
all his disciples in one great organism, as living 
branches of a living Vine. While we are trying to 



RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 79 

give them up they are coming again already, not in 
visible manifestation but in that tide of spiritual life 
more full and deep that beats through our heart of 
hearts from the sphere of immortality. We do not 
wish them back again ? I wish them all back 
again ; and I doubt not they come back in methods 
higher than we conceive of or know how to pray 
for, as they make the heavens more full and strong 
and make them bend near us and touch us with a 
more tender and pervading love. 



A SONG OF VICTORY. 

Sing we now a song of triumph ; 

Leave betimes the shadowy vales 
Where the winds across our lute-strings 

Sink to low and sorrowing wails. 
Stand we now upon the mountains 

Where the glory shines complete ; 
Where the thunders roll beneath us 

Making music at our feet. 

Lo, the pathway lies behind us, 

Where we marched o'er heaps of slain : 
And our vanquished foes lie bleeding 

All along the battle-plain ; — 
All the sordid troop of Mammon ; 

Coward Fear and lust of Praise ; 
Death that cast his baleful shadow 

Over all our darkling ways ; 

Unbelief that feeds on ashes ; 

Fear of man that brings a snare ; 
Selfish Grief and selfish Pleasure ; 

Carnal Pride and haggard Care ; 
Satan in fair form transfigured 

Strewing garlands on the road 
To install our vaunting Reason 

On the eternal throne of God. 
6 



82 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

See his rabble host retreating ! 

Shattered spear and broken shield ; 
See his waning camp-fires flicker 

All along the conquered field ; 
And o'er all like flashing sunbeams 

Waves the mighty Conqueror's sword — 
Louder than your Io Paeans 

Allelujahs to the Lord ! 

Then beyond the Silent River 

See the mystic mountains rise ! 
Range on range away ascending 

Till they kiss the vaulted skies ; 
And along their sun-smit summits 

Thousands walk with sparkling feet, 
And give back our song of triumph 

In the distance soft and sweet. 

From the myriad gleaming turrets 

Whence the billowy music swells, 
Clear across the Silent River, 

Float the chimes of morning bells : 
They have conquered — we have conquered 

And one note of triumph raise, 
Heaven and earth here join together 

In their grandest song of praise. 

Ah ! adown the valley yonder, 

Bending earthward, draped with woe, 
Keeping step to funeral dirges, 

Who are they that creep so slow ? 
Haste ye swiftly with the tidings 

Wafted from the peaks of day ; 
Lead them up to Mount Ascension, 

Fling their scrannel pipes away. 



A SONG OF VICTORY. 83 

Give them beauty now for ashes ; 

Out of weakness make them strong ; 
And in place of churchyard music, 

Give the resurrection song, 
Which the beauteous lips of loved ones 

That they kissed with sad farewells, 
Sing to them from o'er the River 

Mid the chimes of morning bells. 



Now the noontide floods the waters, 

Still beneath the silent oar, 
And their mocky depths of crystal 

Copy down the immortal shore. 
Sing we then upon the mountains 

Where the glory shines complete, 
To the conquering Christ hosannas — 

Fling your garlands at his feet ! 



VI. 

INTERCESSIONS OF THE SPIRIT. 

(WHITSUNDAY.) 

Romans viii. 26. We know not what we should pray for as 
we ought : but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us 
with groanings which cannot be uttered. 

"\70~U might infer at first from this word " groan- 
■*■ ings " that the Apostle makes effectual prayer 
to consist in what are called agonizings, or importu- 
nity ; as if God were like some fickle parents who 
deny their children what they simply ask for, but 
grant it afterwards .to their vociferous cries. No 
such doctrine of prayer is here set forth ; and 
though this word "groanings" sometimes renders 
the Greek term well enough, it certainly is not the 
proper word here. More often the word sighing, or 
deep breathing, is the appropriate rendering. 

Looking back a little through the context, you ob- 
serve that the Apostle describes our weak and suf- 
fering nature girded with frailty and mortality and 
sighing for its deliverance. He sees the whole cre- 
ation travailing in pain. Not only those whom the 
Gospel has not enlightened and blessed, but those 



86 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

also who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, into 
whom the promised Comforter has descended, have 
the same travailings and sighings for redemption. 
And here the Apostle interposes in the text his doc- 
trine of encouragement and consolation. We are not 
groping in the dark. These sighings of the world 
are not the private praying of individuals. They 
are the Spirit of God that intercedes and proph- 
esies within us. They are the Divine voice that 
issues out of depths profounder than our own weak- 
nesses and infirmities, rising straight up through 
them and telling us of things to be. " For, " he says, 
" we know not what we should pray for as we ought, 
but the Spirit itself prays in us." It is He that 
prays, not we, in sighs which are inarticulate — that 
is, in aspirations which are not our private petitions, 
but the prophecyings of God out of the deeps of our 
suffering humanity. 

A truth here dawns upon us, whose sweep and 
significance are of the greatest moment. It is none 
other than the immanence of God in human nature ; 
his prophecyings in us and the pledges of the Divine 
veracity for their fulfillment. 

Following out this doctrine of the Apostle, we dis- 
tinguish in the human heart two classes of desires : 
one class human, one class Divine, or inspirations of 
the Divine. There are those which are simply per- 
sonal, which relate to my own private affairs, bodily 
appetites, worldly comforts, animal wants, personal 



INTERCESSIONS OF THE SPIRIT 8? 

expectations and plans. They are the Teachings out 
of the selfhood after its own gratifications. These 
God has not pledged Himself always to fulfill. On 
the other hand He crosses them, denies them, mor- 
tifies them, sometimes entirely subdues and over- 
comes them. These are not his voice in us. They 
are our own private and personal cries, sometimes 
answered, sometimes not, according as it comports 
with our own and the common weal. And there are 
some, undoubtedly, who have no other desires than 
these, and who never pray heartily for aught but 
personal favors. What helps them on in this world 
and makes them personally prosperous is all they 
wish or ask for. All the world is going right pro- 
vided their selfhood be ministered unto and fed and 
pampered. All the world is going wrong if this be 
not so. And so the Divine breathing, as it comes 
in deep sighs through human nature, like wind mur- 
muring through groves of pine, has never been felt 
in their consciousness. 

But to all persons who have the first-fruits of 
the Spirit, on whose natures the Christian Gospel 
has had even the beginnings of its operation, there 
are sighings and aspirations quite other than these. 
They transcend the little sphere of self and personal 
interest. They originate not in us. They strike 
into us and roll out again, faint and feeble, or full 
and strong, as you are fitted to receive and give 
them out, — like an organ of sweet stops when struck 



88 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

or played upon from another hand. These are what 
Paul means by the intercessions of the Spirit in 
breathings which are inarticulate. Let us distin- 
guish them ; and as we distinguish this voice of God 
in us from our personal cries and selfish clamors, a 
twofold lesson will come to us as we proceed. 
What then are the breathings upward which come 
from the immanence of God in human souls ? 

I. First, there are the hopes of immortality. 
True, the hope of a future life may be a selfish hope. 
Not so, however, when we crave it as a prolonged 
and enlarged sphere of angelic activities already 
begun. Addison's argument for the future life is 
from the expectations which God implanted, and 
which, therefore, He cannot disappoint. But it is 
more than this you perceive in the grand apostolic 
argument, more than mere continuous existence. 
See how he puts it. The whole creation sighs and 
travails in pain, waiting for the redemption of our 
body. You perceive it is not continuous existence 
merely which the Apostle has in view. It is exist- 
ance freed from these clogs and hindrances and lim- 
itations. It is the redemption of our body, so that 
from being a drag, it shall become the fit organism 
of the soul. Have you not wondered sometimes at 
the arrangements and economies of this life ; why so 
much of our time is taken up in getting bread, and 
raiment, and shelter for the body ; why that is made 
our most absorbing care, and to so many people 



INTERCESSIONS OF THE SPIRIT. 89 

almost their sole concern ; why even the glories of 
sky and landscape are made secondary to their min- 
istrations to bodily wants ; why Nature's secret lab- 
oratories are broken into and searched, not so much 
to get openings upward as to get some medicine for 
man's poor infirmities and bruises ? Very strange it 
would be, except that this earth was designed only 
as the very rudiments of being, the mere chrysalis of 
our existence. Very strange it would be, except that 
this veil of flesh and matter was designed to conceal 
from us more than it discloses, and only give us 
hints, suggestions, and tantalizing gleams. It is the 
Divine plan first to excite longings and hungerings 
before God fills us with good. Indeed, the hunger- 
ings must come first, else the good cannot be 
relished, or even received. Therefore it is that here 
He has barred us in and balked us in a thousand 
ways, cumbered with gross bodies, and very mean 
ones at that, yet given us vanishing glimpses of a 
better state, that He may awaken these sighings and 
expectations. Such are the aspirations of immortal- 
ity. They come not till a state of being has dawned 
upon our faith transcending so much the highest 
perfection of this, that its faintest twilight shall show 
us more of the Divine Beauty than earth's most re- 
fulgent noon. 

I remember that when a child, I used to play 
almost within the giant shadows of the Taghconic 
Mountains, and sometimes stop and look up at that 



90 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

great wall of blue that stood sharp against the sky, 
and wonder what lay over" beyond it. The wonder 
and longing increased with years, the more so as I 
watched the setting sunlight round up the highest 
peak and disappear, indicating, as it would seem, an 
ocean of gold surging up from the other side ; till I 
broke away one day and climbed up there, through 
bush and brier, and stood on the summit and looked 
over into the unimaginable and glorious Beyond. 
That discipline is just what God is doing for us here 
in these valleys of time with the light of eternity 
playing on the highest peaks that hem us in. The 
Christian faitn has not dawned upon you with any 
clearness unless it has so exalted and brightened 
all your ideals of the Divine glory that this earth 
grows very dim and shadowy even in its summer 
robes and holidays ; and then come the breathings 
inarticulate which Paul describes ; aspirations to- 
wards a perfection and a beauty which transcend 
those of the senses ; the foretellings of the soul as 
struck by the Spirit of God on whose line of aspira- 
tions she rises to their fulfillment as faith turns to 
sight and hope is lost in Reality. 

Is there any heart here that sighs for a better 
state ? Is there any mind on which has dawned 
the blessed ideals of a perfection unrealized ; of a 
fellowship more full and sufficing than you get here ; 
of more heartfelt communion with Christ ; of the ex- 
ercise of a more swift angelic beneficence ? These 



INTERCESSIONS OF THE SPIRIT. 9 1 

are not your sighings, but breathings of God through 
you, and telling you of things to be. They are not 
private prophecyings, but the touch of God's finger 
on the human lyre, waking sighs for redemption, and 
giving openings of paradise. They awaken sighs 
and longings, because in the nature of things God 
must give us hunger before He gives us food : the 
thirst must come before the slaking, and yearnings 
after higher perfection must come to you before you 
enter the land where there is no trail of the serpent 
over its green. 

II. Somewhat different from this, yet intimately 
connected with it, are breathings after holiness. 
These again are not your private desires, but the 
Spirit praying in you and through you. How selfish 
sometimes are our prayers ! — prayers even for sal- 
vation, when by being saved is only meant some 
outward good vicariously bestowed and purchased. 
But breathings after holiness, or heaven as a sub- 
jective state of purity and divine order within you 
are quite otherwise. And He has girded us with sin 
and pollution, and made us vividly conscious of them, 
and then put his own Spirit within us for the end of 
showing our corruption in contrast with his own 
purity, that we may sigh for the holiness of God. 
And you observe that according to the apostolic doc- 
trine these breathings for holiness are the pledge of 
fulfillment. They are the Spirit prophecying — not 
we — therefore God's promise that He will make us 



92 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

clean if only we desire it. If you desire cleanness of 
heart, it is the sure pledge that you will have it ; for 
it is God promising. Those who are always satisfied, 
who are complacent in their worldliness, the angels 
themselves might despair of. As to purity of heart 
and life, the same law must hold ever and every- 
where ; the thirst must come before the slaking, 
the hunger before the food : the awful chasm be- 
tween our corruption and God's purity must be seen 
before He will come over to us and bring forth his 
best robe and put it on us. 

III. Once more we analyze, and we find in every 
soul which has been born of the Spirit a sentiment 
which stands apart from all our selfish wants and 
clamorings. It is the desire to serve others ; to do 
something for the common weal, something, however 
humble, that shall increase the sum total of human 
happiness, and that shall tend to redeem the world 
from evil and restore it to a full communion with its 
Lord. It is this sentiment which inspires every 
missionary enterprise and sends the Howards and 
the Judsons over the earth as the angels of heavenly 
mercy. It is this which prompts all our praying for 
each other, and all our deeds of disinterested love. 
The motions of the Spirit within, and its forthgoings 
in prayers and activities for human redemption, are 
its intercessions for the salvation of all mankind. 
In one of his sublime moods the Apostle hears the 
low breathing of the whole creation going up in 



INTERCESSIONS OF THE SPIRIT. 93 

moanings and pleadings for deliverance, as if the 
universal Spirit had made all nature and all human- 
ity an instrument to play upon, and whose minor 
keys sent up to the ear of God tones of pity and 
wailing for human woe. It is the universe travail- 
ing in pain at the touch of the Divine hand upon 
its heart-strings ; it is God's Spirit breathing through 
it and coming up again to his ear in one universal 
prayer for restoration to its Lord. The older 
churches have prayers for the dead, assuming, and 
very justly too, that death does not sunder the ties 
of a common brotherhood ; and unless you allow the 
assumption of our extreme Protestantism, that as 
soon as we die our slate is fixed eternally and cannot 
change, no reason appears why we should not pray 
for them still. The happiness of heaven itself must 
have an element of disturbance, — must lack com- 
pleteness, to say the least, so long as the wail of suf- 
fering rises from below to mingle with its songs, with 
no effort or desire to mitigate and save. 

IV. But the sermon would not be faithful without 
another application. There is in all men a sense or 
a faculty which they call conscience. By common 
consent it is regarded as standing apart in the con- 
sciousness — the Shekinah which the Lord keeps in 
our nature, whence his light flashes out to warn and 
to guide us. We will not pause to analyze it now ; 
but if you have attended to the state of your own 
mind when the conscience was responding in tones 



94 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

of reproach to violations of the Divine Law, you 
have found something more than a sense of right 
and wrong. You have found mingled with your 
regret and self-reproach an apprehension of some- 
thing to come. 

The conscience is always prophetic. It looks be- 
fore as well as after. Hence, so many who have 
denied bibles and revelations from without for the 
sake of getting a sense of security in sin, have been 
startled by fore-gleams from within, shining down 
into chasms of a coming retribution. We may deny 
the written Bible ; we may mistake its meaning ; we 
may be bewildered by false religions. But the fact 
remains, that God has so formed our very nature 
and so pitched and tuned it, that when you lay 
profane hands on the instrument you are answered 
by a voice that rolls in startling distinctness, down 
even the long and shadowy aisles of an eternal 
world, and the scenery of a coming judgment. It 
is not man speaking, but God speaking out of man, 
— the Spirit immanent in you, not merely telling 
you what is right and what is wrong, but holding 
you to a coming retribution and refusing to let you 
go. It is God speaking through you, foretelling a 
judgment to come, since He is not a man that He 
should lie, nor the son of man that He should repent 

I have read of a man who reasoned himself into 
atheism and crime, but coming to the verge of this 
mortal life was awakened by the loud prophecies of 



INTERCESSIONS OF THE SPIRIT 95 

the Spirit within. It was not fear of a local hell 
somewhere in the uncertain future, but hell already 
realized, and flinging its lurid gleams through the 
shadows of the coming darkness. " That which tri- 
umphs," said he, "within the jaws of immortality is 
doubtless immortal ; and as for a Deity, nothing less 
than an Almighty could inflict what I feel." Ter- 
rible arguments these ! The voice of God strik- 
ing through us, but rolling out of us again, down 
through the abysses of eternity. Better be per- 
suaded of a God by willing obedience to his Christ, 
than by the prophecies of a violated conscience, 
sounding on through the portals that open down- 
ward into the night. 

One lesson let me draw from the subject, and that 
we will lay up and carry home with us. Some peo- 
ple are always doubting and hesitating about prayer. 
Why should we pray at all since God knows our 
wants before we ask Him ? You see in the light of 
this subject that those who have the Spirit of the 
Lord in them pray because they cannot help it ; 
for when you get beyond the circle of mere selfish 
desires his Spirit prays in you and urges you might- 
ily. Longings for higher attainment as the bright 
ideals go on before you and beckon you upward ; 
breathing after holiness when in the light of God's 
dazzling purity you are sick of your own sin, — when 
these come to you, you will pray every day and 



g6 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

every hour, and what is more, be sure of an an- 
swer. 

I think one of the most blessed boons which the 
Gospel bestows on the human race is the clear an- 
nunciation of a principle that takes all servility out 
of worship, and all selfishness out of prayer ; this 
principle, namely, that the desire of salvation, if you 
have it, renders it impossible you should ever miss of 
salvation — as impossible as it is for God to break 
his word. Only do not make a mistake as to what 
salvation means. It means a clean heart and a heav- 
enly mind. It is not heaven as the scenery of rivers 
and landscapes, though doubtless all that may be, 
but heaven as a subjective state of Christ-like dis- 
position and affections. 

Whoever desires these and prays for them, the 
prayer renders it impossible he shall miss the attain- 
ment, since it is the Holy Spirit praying and proph- 
esying within. It is thus that every one who 
asketh, receiveth, and he who seeketh, findeth. The 
annunciation of this one law of asking and receiving, 
of prayer and its answer, puts the Gospel in heavenly 
contrast with human substitutes for the Gospel ; 
and, if once you have a firm grasp upon it, is suffi- 
cient to take all gloom from religion, to put into it 
the elasticity of faith and hope, yea, to hang all the 
clouds of life with rainbows. 






THE THREE ADVENTS. 

The Eternal Word came down from heaven 

Wrapped in our human clay ; 
Beneath his voice the tombs were riven 

And searched with blaze of day. 

He comes again — the Spirit's power, 

On soft and dove-like wing ; 
I breathe in this thy advent hour 



The balmiest gales of Sprin 



And when thy voice, like thunders loud, 
Brings on the judgment day, 

And through this intervening cloud 
Doth cleave thy shining way, 

Let thy white robe of righteousness 

Our trusting souls adorn, 
And be the shinings of thy face 

The eternal Christmas Morn ! 



VII. 

THE GOSPEL CONTRASTS. 

Matthew xxv. 46. These shall go away into everlasting 
Punishment : but the righteous into life eternal. 

P*HE arrangement of the words in the original 
■*■ text is so made that the two members of the 
sentence are put in balance one against the other. 
Thus, " These shall go away into punishment eternal, 
but the righteous into life eternal." This word ren- 
dered "punishment" means, according to its ety- 
mology, a particular kind of punishment. Literally 
it means pruning — as the pruning of trees. It sug- 
gests the idea that the punishment is not arbitrary 
or revengeful, but disciplinary and corrective ; for 
you do not prune trees for the purpose of destroying 
them, but to remove hindrances and morbid growths. 
The passage has often been regarded as if the chief 
thing to be considered was the duration of the pun- 
ishment of the unrighteous, over against the dura- 
tion of the life of the righteous ; and that since both 
are described by the same' word they are of like du- 
ration. That would undoubtedly be so if mere dura- 
tion or extension by time were expressed at all, or 



100 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

any way involved in the contrast. But that, as I 
should interpret, is not the meaning of the original 
word. The element of time as we measure things 
does not enter into it at all. Not duration, but 
quality, is the chief thing involved in this word ren- 
dered " eternal." If I should say one man's state is 
heavenly and another man's is fiendish, I should put 
their qualities in contrast, without reference to their 
duration. So here in the contrast between the pun- 
ishment of the unrighteous and the life of the right- 
eous. The word which qualifies them does not mean 
measurement by our standards of time, whether end- 
less or not. It means rather a punishment and a life 
beyond time and all its changes and estimates. The 
eternal life is promised the saints now and here, but 
they may forfeit it and fall away from it nevertheless. 
So I should paraphrase the words thus : These shall 
go away into a punishment which time cannot meas- 
ure, and the righteous into a life which time cannot 
measure ; that is, which is out of time and beyond its 
bourne. 

This whole discourse, running through two chap- 
ters, the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth, has always 
seemed to me the most remarkable that ever fell 
from human lips. It is one of those utterances which 
avouch their own origin, and which break through all 
the discoursings of men as a peal of thunder from 
the heavens hushes the noises of the street and com- 
pels us to listen. That Matthew, or anybody else, 



THE GOSPEL CONTRASTS. IOI 

put it in of himself, that the literary exploit of any 
age is up to a level of that kind, were about as rea- 
sonable to my mind as to suppose that some tele- 
graph operator had become so expert as to invent 
the lightnings, or so mimic their course on the sky 
that none could distinguish the real ones from the 
flashy imitations. Not that this discourse of our 
Saviour deals mainly in the terrific, or in appeals to 
human fears. It has passages so full of tenderness 
that it would seem as if the very heart of the Divine 
Mercy were breaking for the woes of men ; and in 
these last passages that announce the Divine judg- 
ments, there is a humanity that swells and throbs 
through the sentences: as when He speaks of the 
hungry, the naked, the prisoners, all of God's humble 
poor, and says mercy to them is the same as mercy 
to me, for I suffer with them. 

The word aw and its derivatives, rendered 
" eternal " and " everlasting," describe an economy 
complete in itself, and the duration must depend on 
the nature of the economy. What then do the 
Scriptures reveal to us ? The results of this tempo- 
ral economy in the one that lies next on, beyond the 
limits of the first death. They lift the curtain, and 
in the solemn porches of eternity they show us the 
human current parting divers ways to the realms of 
light and the realms of darkness. The New Testa- 
ment, if it reveals anything, reveals the aUov — the 
dispensation that lies next to this, and gathers into 



102 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

it the momentous results of our probation in time. 
But what lies beyond that in the cycles of a coming 
eternity, I do not believe has been revealed to the 
highest angel. Think of that endless Beyond ! If 
every atom of the globe were counted off and every 
atom stood for a million years, still we have not ap- 
proached a conception of endless duration. And yet 
sinful and fallible men affirm that their fellow sinners 
are to be given over to indescribable agonies through 
those millions of years thus repeated, and even then 
the clocks of eternity have only struck the morning 
hour ! that the hells of pent-up anguish are to streak 
eternity with blood in lines parallel forever with the 
being of God ! If Gabriel should come and tell us 
that, we should have a right to believe that the his- 
tory of the infinite future infolded in the bosom of 
God had not been given to Gabriel ! 

A candid and reasonable interpretation, while it 
has not told and cannot tell what lies beyond the 
cycle which Scripture reveals, may and does give us 
clearer views of the nature of retribution. All the 
scenery of the spirit-world described in the Bible 
is to be understood in the light of a more rational 
pneumatology. Because it is not material scenery, 
it none the less sets forth the most august realities, 
the things contained already in human nature and 
waiting to be disclosed. The future of man he bears 
within himself — the white enrobing purities, and 
the fires and the ascending smoke of torment. It is 



THE GOSPEL CONTRASTS. 103 

a most instructive fact that conceptions of the future 
retribution always tally exactly with one's intuitions 
of moral evil. Any man who thinks sin belongs only 
to the surface, will see very little or no evil in pros- 
pect when this outward coil has been removed. Any 
man in whose consciousness moral and spiritual evil 
have been more vivid, and its subtle and malignant 
nature understood, will readily believe that the low- 
est hells which the Scriptures describe are no rhetor- 
ical exaggerations, but the real apocalypse of an un- 
cleansed human nature. He knows that since this 
tide of humanity is setting into the spiritual world 
continually, with only portions of it redeemed from 
evil, there must be in that world the heights of peace 
and the noxious abysses which no plummet can 
fathom, and he will not try to hide the reality in 
shallow sentimentalism. For what is here concealed 
under temporal disguises, must there be open and 
palpable where the disguises are swept away. Three 
stages of enlightenment on this subject may be thus 
described. In the ante-Christian period there were 
faint gleams and guess-work. In the first Christian 
period the fact is disclosed, the imagery of heaven 
and hell is unveiled with marvelous distinctness, 
but understood as localities of space and time. But 
in the stage of more rational interpretation they are 
the symbolization of the things in man to break forth 
in open manifestation. 

With these preliminary considerations, let us en- 



104 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

deavor to get the essential meaning of these gospel 
contrasts, summed up in the text as the contrast be- 
tween eternal (oIuvlov) life and eternal punishment, 
more often described as the contrast between life 
and death. In so doing, I am persuaded we shall 
come to the heart and substance of the Gospel mes- 
sage. 

All life in man is measured by the intensity and 
vividness of the consciousness. Life in its fullness 
means strength and quickness in all the faculties. 
Take for illustration the lowest plane, which is the 
sensuous life. In some people the senses are clear 
and quick, and they will put one in swift communi- 
cation with all the beauty and all the facts that lie 
about him. We say then he is alive to what is 
around him. The ear drinks in the smallest wave- 
lets of sound. The eye sees ; and color, size, pro- 
portion, outline, distance, things far and near, and 
great and small, are keenly discerned. The touch 
takes swift cognition in the thrilling nerves. And 
so of all the senses. One man will pass through a 
few miles of space and be so alive to what is in it 
that volumes will not exhaust his narrative. And 
you can imagine these senses so alive as to see 
worlds of wonder and glory right about us which 
have never disclosed themselves to us as yet be- 
cause we are too dull to take them in, — under our 
feet, over head, in all the air, — mysteries that lie at 
the heart of things waiting to be disclosed. One of 



THE GOSPEL CONTRASTS. IO5 

the fathers of astronomy, opposed by the bigots 
of his day, exults at the marvels which opened to 
his keener vision, and he exclaims with rapture : " I 
can wait two hundred years for a reader since God 
waited six thousand years for an observer ! " 

Again, the senses may be dull and half -dead, so 
that a man may perceive very little of what is about 
him. He will go through the same miles of space 
and see nothing and hear nothing that some ani- 
mals would not see and hear. A man begins to die 
bodily when his senses begin to fail, and when they 
fail altogether he is dead, and all this scene of sights 
and sounds exists for him no more. 

It is precisely so with the spiritual life and with 
all the faculties of the soul. The reason may be 
clear as a mirror to receive the truth, and its step 
strong and unerring to reach its conclusions. Faith 
may grasp its objects so royally that things future 
may be as things that are. The affections may be 
so full, and so warm and flowing, that the soul shall 
be drawn to the good and the true as the lover to 
his bride. The conscience may be so clear and re- 
sponsive that the voice of God shall fill the soul as 
with the sound of " flutes and soft recorders." And 
the power of execution may be so nimble that a 
man's works shall be like radiating charities. Such 
a soul is alive ; and you see how one man may live 
in a world from which another man right by his side 
is barred and excluded altogether. 



106 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

And now we can see what eternal life means. It 
is life on a higher plane of being and in the higher 
degrees of the mind ; the best faculties made so vivid 
and active that eternal things are open to them, and 
their glories revealed. What is the life of heaven ? 
Not that of lazy devotion, but the human powers 
raised to such a pitch of intensity that the Spirit 
and the love of God fill them to the full ; the reason, 
an outlook into divine and angelic being ; affections 
so burning that love never waxes cold ; charity an 
overflowing stream that never dries up ; faith so as- 
sured that prayer always lays the soul on the bosom 
of its Lord. This is life. Because it puts the soul 
into the enjoyment and communion with eternal 
things, and opens to it the highest landscapes of 
eternity, it is called the eternal life, and because un- 
like our temporal life it is unfluctuating and peren- 
nial. The element of time does not enter into it at 
all. You cannot measure it by months and years 
though they were endless. Suppose the life of an 
animal, or of a sensuous man, to be prolonged for- 
ever ; that is not the eternal life of the Gospel. Sup- 
pose the agonies of mortality to be prolonged for- 
ever ; that is not the eternal death of the Gospel, nor 
any approach towards its conception. It is life and 
death on the higher planes of being, out of time and 
out of space, and which they cannot measure, though 
extended without end. It is this that the Scriptures 
describe by the untranslatable word almaoi: 



THE GOSPEL CONTRASTS. IQJ 

We observe, again, that enjoyment corresponds 
with the measure of life which one possesses. A clod 
or a stone enjoys nothing because they are not alive. 
Some animals are but just removed from vegetable 
existence, and their life is so torpid that they may 
be killed without much pain. Men who have not 
much life enjoy little and suffer little. They slug 
rather than live. But when the consciousness be- 
comes intense, the sensibilities keen, and the affec- 
tions warm, what a flood of enjoyment, of glory, and 
of beauty rushes in upon them, even from this lower 
universe ! The freedom of the city of God is theirs. 
All pleasure, all happiness, come from the activity 
of the faculties, putting them in full correspondence 
with their objects. 

Such, then, is the eternal life. These conceptions, 
it is true, do not agree with the notion which makes 
heaven a place of indolent repose, or listless devo- 
tion, into which we can be introduced by vicarious 
or legal arrangements. But in the very nature of 
things, the state of the highest bliss is where the 
soul in all her faculties is raised to such a pitch of 
activity and quickness of perception that she in- 
herits all things. She is not introduced among 
them passively. They open upon her as her own 
powers become enlarged and unlocked to take them 
in and enjoy them. 

II. We now come to the opposite term, death, or 
as we have it in the text, punishment, or pruning 



108 SERMOiVS AND SONGS. 

away. Death, as the opposite of life, is the waning 
and falling away of the human powers. It is not the 
extinguishment of existence. I think it is never 
used in Scripture as synonymous with annihilation. 
It is the going down of existence towards the clods 
of the valley. A man, I said, begins to die phys- 
ically when his senses begin to grow dull and shut 
him in from the natural world. The eye fails, the 
ear fails, the touch fails, all the avenues from with- 
out fail, and things around grow blurred and dim. 
Finally they close altogether, and then the comely 
form lies there a corpse - — the cold effigy of a man, 
and all sights and sounds pass over it as they do 
over the stones and the trees. There is a bright 
universe above it and around it, but the decayed 
senses have shut it all out. 

Just so it is with spiritual death. All sin tends to 
weaken the faculties and blunt their perceptions, and 
finally to close them up. It is so with sensual sin. 
Violate the beautiful laws of this bodily frame, and 
how much more quickly will its senses become 
feeble and dull, ending sometimes in the paralysis 
of its nerves. So of reason and the moral sense, 
and the kindly sympathies and the power of seeing 
and acquiring divine truth. Sin makes them wane 
and die out. And then the whole spiritual man is 
dead, and the heavenly world is shut out from his 
perceptions and his enjoyments, simply because he 
has no faculty to put him in correspondence with 



THE GOSPEL CONTRASTS. 109 

them, or even to assure him that they exist. He is 
dead to them as a corpse is dead to nature. Hence 
you find all through the Bible that the consequences 
of sin are represented not as suffering imposed upon 
the sinner, but as an inhering destruction and de- 
cline. It is death, destruction, perishing, darkness, 
pruning away ; and the meaning is, not annihila- 
tion, but that it tends to make all positive existence 
fade out till the sinful become the negatives of real 
men. " Except ye repent ye shall all likewise per- 
ish," — for to perish is to wither away into a husk 
or a shell. This is spiritual death. Hell then is a 
negative state, not positive. It is the night side of 
the universe. It is humanity reversed and turned 
away from the central glory. Whereas heaven is 
positive, — man turned towards God, humanity on 
the day-side receiving the warmth and radiance of 
the Divine Nature and bringing forth fruit under its 
inspiring energy. 

III. We come to another truth. The more of 
life there is to die out, the greater is the convulsion 
and the agony. It is so with the body, and it is 
so with the soul. If the human frame is full of 
strength and energy, its death struggle is more in- 
tense. So of the death of the soul. Man has an 
angel's faculties. They cannot be wrenched away 
from their high end and go down in darkness with- 
out long and fearful agonies. You see it so here 
when the soul is preyed upon by the unclean pas- 



110 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

sions which the Scriptures call the infernal fire. 
The relief from this is only in the decay of the ca- 
pacity for suffering which sin, unrepented of, pro- 
duces at last, - — the fire of the soul burning out its 
purer and nobler material, and leaving a blackened 
crater to be filled with snow. Endless torture is 
an impossibility and a contradiction in terms ; for 
torture destroys finally even the capacity for feel- 
ing torture, and eats out the material it feeds on. 
Neither annihilation nor endless suffering are im- 
plied in the second death, but the waste and deso- 
lation of a soul which has lost the capacity to enjoy 
or to suffer greatly, — though none may tell the 
mental agony through which an immortal *mind 
must pass to that awful ruin. Physical suffering is 
of no account compared with those inward tortures 
which are independent of the bodily senses. Hence 
when all external arrangements are propitious and 
fair, the soul within may be wrung from a deeper 
seat of anguish than mortal weapons can ever 
reach ; and the anguish has sometimes been so 
great that men have rushed on death, in the hope of 
escaping from it. In his higher nature man neither 
enjoys nor suffers like an animal. There is a tone 
in his rapture which is not of earth, and a tone that 
is more than mortal mingles in the voice of his 
wail. 

Reasoning thus from the analogies which give us 
most surely and directly the significance of Ian- 



THE GOSPEL CONTRASTS. I 1 1 

guage, we evolve the meaning of these contrasts of 
the Christian revelation. They indicate a retribu- 
tion of the most solemn import to be wrought out 
on the higher planes of being. They point to a 
state of existence beyond this present, where every 
man shall reap down the harvest which he sows. 
Of what lies on beyond that I will not speculate now 
I do not know of any written revelation pertaining 
to that endless Beyond of sinful men. There are 
unwritten intimations in the hopes and aspirations 
which the Spirit inspires and which go up in prayers 
and intercessions for the redemption and final happi- 
ness of every immortal soul. These, as we saw in 
the last discourse, are not merely our private pray- 
ing, but the prophecyings of the Spirit through us 
and telling us of things to be ; for I will not be- 
lieve that our private praying is more humane than 
the Eternal Spirit that inspires it. It warrants the 
belief that there will be no unnecessary pang in 
the universe, or down the eternities, though it does 
not reveal to us the epoch or the methods of the 
final restoration. Such a revelation, thrown down 
upon us externally, might interfere, perhaps, with the 
best achievements of our probation now and here. 
There is enough revealed to disclose the fearful nat- 
ure and consequences of sin ; for the rest, I trust 
to the Infinite goodness without seeking for that 
which is held in the Divine Reserve. 

(i.) Two points in the conclusion are urged upon 



112 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

us. The mission of Christ and the nature of his 
salvation reveal themselves to us with great clearness. 
" I have come," He says, " that ye might have life, 
and that ye might have it more abundantly." He 
gives life because He imparts inward energy. He 
comes not to repress and cripple the reason, but to 
enlarge it, strengthen it, open wide its eye-sight, and 
lift it up into divine illuminations. He comes to un- 
lock the deepest fountains of love and make them 
flow, and this He does by turning upon us all the Di- 
vine graces and charms. He comes to make the 
moral sense so lively and responsive that its vibra- 
tions shall fill the soul with angelic harmonies. He 
comes to fortify the will and make it like flint for the 
right and the true. He comes to strengthen the 
power of doing and give us drafts on God's omnip- 
otence for godlike achievement. He comes not to 
purchase heaven for us — so much blood for so much 
salvation — but so to build up the man within through 
living faith, and so to open out his mind to all the 
good in the universe, that it shall be heaven to him 
wherever he moves ; not to crush the faculties un- 
der fear and cowardice, but to touch every one with 
a divine impulse, and make it go with gladness to its 
work. " He that believeth on me hath everlasting- 
life, and I will raise him up at the last day." 

(2.) Again, the nature of Christ's Church, and why 
it is a Church militant and aggressive, and not dor- 
mant and passive, becomes obvious in the light of our 



THE GOSPEL CONTRASTS. 113 

subject. It is because in the former there is life, 
and scope for the putting forth and enlargement of all 
the powers of an immortal being ; whereas in passiv- 
ity and asceticism the faculties fall away and go down 
towards death. If you hear truly and distinctly " the 
voice of the Son of Man," it will be to you a trum- 
pet call to active duty and not a lull into solitary rest. 
It is the trump that wakes the sleepers from their 
graves to a resurrection of life, lest if they sleep on 
it will be to a resurrection of damnation. The high- 
est peace, that which alone is eternal, is won through 
power. More than ever the voice of the great Head 
of the Church is sounding through it. " The time is 
coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the 
voice of the Son of Man, and they that hear shall be 
alive." 



A SONG IN THE MINOR KEY. 

I stand on Time's mysterious brink, 

And send an onward gaze 
Where throngs of spirits rise or sink 

At parting of the ways. 

Upward, towards the sun-lit rooms, 
They climb the shining stairs ; 

Or, downward through the swirling glooms, 
Sink to their long despairs. 

And happy thrills of song and lyre 

Come from the angel-train, 
And upward through the crater-fire 

The muffled groans of pain. 

And as I heard, my song uprose 

To catch that heavenly air, 
When straightway on my lips it froze 

To agonizing prayer. 

O ye who climb the stairs above, 
And crowd up nigh the throne, 

How can ye sing redeeming Love 
And see its work half done ? 

O thou great Mercy ! folding all 
Beneath thy brooding wing, — 

Those who to thee for pity call 
Or their redemption sing, — 



Il6 SERMONS AND SOA T GS. 

I ask not through the highest room 

Of heavenly state to go, 
But downward through the thickest gloom 

Of any child of woe. 

Did not thy Christ go down to hell 

And cut its brazen bars, 
Before he sought his coronal — 

His golden crown of stars ? 

Are they not all my kith and kin, 
And children, Lord, of thine, 

Alike who beg in rags of sin, — 
In jeweled robes who shine ? 

We all are beggars ; poor and bare 

We stand before thy face, 
Save when in borrowed robes we flare, 

Or shinmgs of thy grace. 

Here I will raise no song of glee, 
And hold no waving palm ; 

I breathe upon the minor key 
My penitential psalm. 

I share my brother's grief — I list 

The undertones of pain, 
And pray to see thy conquering Christ 

Go up with all his train. 



VIII. 

TREADING THE WINE-PRESS. 
Isaiah lxiii. 3. I have trodden the wine-press alone. 

THIS sentence is from one of those chapters of 
the old prophecies which are generally un- 
derstood to foreshadow the Messiah. But as fore- 
shadowed here, he is not the temporal prince nor 
the conquering hero of the Jewish imagination. It 
seems to me, in reading these chapters, that the 
future Christ had arisen on the vision of the prophet 
in his true character and his moral grandeur, and 
that the prophet is straining his vision to get it clear 
of Jewish hallucinations. A form rises away in the 
distant perspective, which he cannot present to his 
reader in any such outline as the painter gives to 
his picture, or the sculptor to his statue, partly be- 
cause it is beyond finite conception, and partly be- 
cause the vista is filled with Jewish haze. A char- 
acter is sketched, nevertheless, such as had never 
appeared in history, and with such combination of 
attributes and qualities as no writer would sketch 
from his own fancy. He is divine, yet human ; tri- 
umphant, yet weak and suffering ; royal, yet with no 
lineage that men can trace ; glorious «in his apparel, 
yet with no comeliness that men can desire ; tread- 



Il8 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

ing down his enemies, yet drawing upon Himself the 
sorrows and iniquities of all. But there is nothing 
more striking in the whole portraiture than the 
lonely greatness of the man. He stands out soli- 
tary. He treads the wine-press alone. His height 
is so great that it lifts him away from kindred sym- 
pathies and ties. A chasm lies between Him and all 
other men, and between Him and God, for He is 
stricken and afflicted of God himself. 

The Christ is the only being who ever filled up 
this vast foreshadowing with historic reality. And 
no fact in the Saviour's life is more strangely im- 
pressive than this of .his absolute solitude. For 
what solitude is like that of being alone in the midst 
of crowds, among a great company, and yet so wide 
apart from it that the distance between is altogether 
impassable. He drew around Him a band of disci- 
ples and believers ; but the one that stood nearest, 
and leaned on his breast, remained in almost total 
ignorance of the being he followed, until after his 
death and resurrection. He stood under a heavy 
load of mortal anguish, when there was no one to 
help Him bear it, or even to know it was laid upon 
Him. The gulf of separation even came between 
Him and the Eternal Father. And when the load 
was heaviest, and He went away by Himself and fell 
beneath it, no mortal was a witness to it, and even 
his disciples were fast asleep. 

No solitude is like his. And yet it represents a 



TREADING THE WINE-PRESS. 119 

condition of human nature. For this very reason 
the Saviour bore the trial, that He might come to 
every one else who has the same trial to bear, and 
clothe him with strength from on high. For every 
one of us must bear it in our place and degree. 
The longer we live, and the more our being becomes 
individualized, the more shall we find ourselves 
alone. Every man is separated from every other 
man, and probably no person was ever perfectly un- 
derstood by any other person. There are common 
tastes and feelings and sympathies ; but at the 
same time there is an individualism that keeps apart, 
and refuses to yield itself to the crowd. No one 
knows his fellow a great way beneath the surface. 
There is something in you that has never been dis- 
closed to your neighbor who sits beside you, — 
something in him to which you are a stranger, and 
with which you cannot intermeddle. Looks, lan- 
guage, actions reveal a little, but there is that in 
every one which finds not a symbol nor a tongue. 

This fact has a very important bearing on the 
whole subject of human trial. As your eye rests 
on almost any group of people whom accident may 
have brought together, you would see ordinarily 
nothing but cheerful appearances and salutations. 
If the concourse were gathered from what are usu- 
ally called the favored classes, — those, namely, who 
are not subjected to the hard necessities of toil, and 
have abundant leisure for enjoyment, — you will find, 



120 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

perhaps, not only cheerfulness, but hilarity and 
gayety. Happy people ! you would say. They taste 
the sweet without the bitter ; they drink the wine 
of life without the lees. 

But could you follow that concourse as they sep- 
arate one by one, and part off each to his own place 
and home ; could you enter that home, and look 
back through the continuous line of its history, you 
would generally find that each went to some place 
of sorrowful recollections ; that in the sunshine 
of every house there was a blank spot, or it may be 
the outlines of a fearful shadow. I do not say that 
this will always be found true, at any one moment, 
of all the families you might name, but I say it is 
true of every family before its history is wound up. 
Not a hearthstone shall you find on which some 
shadow has not fallen or is about to fall. Further 
than this, you will probably find that there are few 
households which do not cherish some sorrow not 
known to the world ; who have not some trial which 
is their peculiar messenger, and which they do not 
talk about except among themselves. Some hope 
that has been blasted ; some expectation dashed 
down ; some wrong, real or supposed, which some 
member of the household has suffered ; trembling 
anxieties lest that other member will not succeed ; 
trials from the peculiar temperament of somebody 
in the house, or some environment that touches it 
sharply from without ; some thorn in the flesh ; 



TREADING THE WINE-PRESS. 121 

some physical disability that cripples our energies 
when we want to use them the most ; some spot in 
the house where Death has left his track, or painful 
listenings to hear his stealthy footsteps coming on : 
these, and a thousand other things, render it certain 
that there is no house which must not some day 
have a secret shadow on its hearth. 

Further than this, even ; there is no individual 
whose experience has any breadth and depth, who has 
not some trial which you know nothing about, and 
which perhaps no one knows but himself. This we 
may assume, — partly from the fact that there are 
struggles of the hidden life where none but God can 
be a helper ; that there are doubts, fears, tremblings, 
disappointments, combats, hopes that rise and fall ; 
which always gather about it, — partly, too, from the 
fact that the most pungent and wasting sorrows to 
which the human heart becomes a prey are the very 
ones which retire farthest inward and refuse even to 
be breathed into the ear of friendship. For the hard- 
est trials of all are those of the spiritual nature, where 
every man wrestles with his own temptations, which 
are different from any other man's, and give him an 
experience which is all his own, and which no one 
can understand but himself ; where even the best 
men, to all outward seeming, have felt that desertion 
which the Christ had when he prayed the Father 
not to forsake him, and where sometimes the great 
conflict of life goes on beneath the glare which 
grandeur or station has thrown around it. 



122 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

I assume it, then, as an undeniable fact, that while 
there are vast inequalities in appearances touching 
our natural allotments of joy and sorrow, yet when 
you lay off these appearances and come to the 
naked facts of the case, it is quite otherwise. The 
secret trials of human hearts put them on ground of 
equality before God. And though no man's trials 
are just like any other man's yet they are all his own, 
and every soul has its own secret burden to bear. 
There are common griefs and condolences ; yet after 
all these have been talked over, each has something 
left which he has not shared with his neighbor, and 
that may be the very thing that touches him most 
nearly and tenderly. So that, while there are com- 
mon burdens to be borne and common consolations 
to be shared, it is also true in a most important 
sense, that every man must tread the wine-press 
alone. 

Let us now see if we cannot derive some very im- 
portant lessons from this economy of things. What 
are the teachings of these secret trials ? 

I. The first is this, — to cease from all those false 
comparisons that breed discontents and envyings 
amongst men. Almost every individual, at some 
period of his life, seems to himself to be separated by 
Divine Providence to some peculiar hardship, and he 
wonders why this is so. Why am I singled out, and 
thrust beyond the circle of Divine favors ? Why is 
it that I have this burden laid upon me, while this 



TREADING THE WINE-PRESS. 123 

other individual and that other family send forth 
their little ones like a flock, and their children 
dance ? Very likely, if his feelings were candidly 
analyzed, he would find himself at issue both with 
his neighbor and his God, because while he had 
failed, some one else had succeeded, and outstripped 
him in the race of life. He does not remember that 
appearances serve as a protection to keep out the 
glare of the world from the sacred privacies of the 
heart. If the protecting coverings were all swept 
away under which each one struggles with his lot 
and treads the wine-press alone, every pretext for 
envy or discontent on this score would disappear, 
and every man would see that every other man was 
separated to some burden quite as peculiar as his 
own. 

And here we have room to remark on the admira- 
ble compensations of the Divine Providence. Every 
man has his own adversary to struggle with apart, 
and his own victory to gain, for the simple reason 
that God designs to educe from our diversified ex- 
perience every variety of the graces and virtues. 
He never repeats Himself in nature ; but from the 
cedar of Lebanon to the lily of the vale, He seeks a 
fresh evolution and efflorescence out of his own 
grandeur and beauty, that infinite diversity may 
make up the infinite completeness and harmony. 
Just so it is in human character and moral attain- 
ment. God never repeats Himself here. He gives 



124 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

to each a varied experience. We march not in ser- 
ried numbers to conquer a common foe, but He 
leads us through separate paths, each one to strug- 
gle with his own adversary alone, that, when the 
victory is gained, and the crown is won, each shall 
have in it a leaf or a chaplet which is unlike any 
other, so that all together may reflect every possible 
hue of the Divine loveliness. 

II. A second lesson comes to us from these secret 
trials. If the fact were pondered and appreciated as 
it should be, it would strengthen very much that bond 
of sympathy and brotherhood which ought to exist 
among all the members of the social state. I doubt 
whether in this our earthly condition, we ever come 
to- the full feeling of sympathy and brotherhood, 
without the consciousness of a common frailty and 
sorrow. You may reason with men very finely, ply- 
ing the argument that we have one Father, that we 
are all partakers of his nature, and therefore are all 
brethren. Very true, but men will not care for 
it in the day of their strength and pride, and you 
never will melt any man's heart towards his fel- 
lows by mere beautiful theorizing. But suppose 
some common calamity were to sweep over these 
people and bend them low ; suppose some angel of 
sorrow were to pass over every house and leave his 
victim ; it would do more, a thousand times, to make 
every man feel that he is a part of every other man 
than all our fine philosophy. But what I have put 



TREADING THE WINE-PRESS. \2$ 

as hypothesis is simple and sober fact, though the 
fact is veiled under thin and artificial disguises, for I 
say to you that the angel does pass over every house 
and leave his victim ; and if you could draw the 
curtain aside, you would see he had been treading 
the wine-press behind it. 

It was found when one of the great ocean steam- 
ers was on the verge of shipwreck, the passengers, 
who represented almost every sect in Christendom, 
and who before had kept apart in groups, forgot all 
their sectarianism in the presence of a common 
danger, and they knelt and prayed together as one 
family in Christ, about to be summoned to his bar. 
Precisely so it would be in the great voyage of life. 
Let the fact be fully pondered, that there is no Uto- 
pian independence of the common lot, that there is 
a woe that presses down separately on every man's 
soul, and that he, like myself, is wrestling hard with 
it, though it comes to each man in variant shape, 
and suited to his condition, — let this be pondered 
as it should be, and every man will look upon every 
other man as bound to himself by a more interesting 
and tender tie. Yea, when I meet the man of show 
and equipage, I shall not be found gazing so much 
on the glitter and the gilding, as musing with myself 
how it fares with that man under the protecting 
shadows where he treads the wine-press alone. 

There was a fierce battle fought, and a vic- 
tory won ; and foremost in the battle, and most 



126 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

honored in the rejoicings of victory, was a brave old 
count whose heart and arm seemed both to be 
made of steel. The feast is over and the rejoicings 
are hushed, and the stillness of night has come down 
upon the plain. But lo ! there is a taper burning in 
the tent of the iron count, while all but the guard 
have gone to rest. Why sleeps he not upon his 
laurels ? Why burns his lamp at midnight after the 
day has covered him with glory ? They lift a cor- 
ner of the curtain and look in, and the iron count 
sits alone over the body of his dead son, and great 
drops are standing in his eyes. A German poet has 
described it, and a German painter has put it upon 
canvas. And it describes very well what takes 
place after most of the conflicts of life, after the 
victory is won and the festivities are over, and the 
chief man among them treads the wine-press alone. 

III. A third lesson, and still more important. For 
aught that yet appears, there need have been no 
burden to any man which others might not share, 
no grief of the heart which he might not tell to his 
neighbor. And yet every man is separated to his 
own burden. Each has a reserved fund of trouble, 
which to him is a special dispensation. Now see 
the necessity of this ! If I could share everything 
with my fellow, I should have nothing left to share 
specially and sacredly with Him who bends his eai 
from the heavens for this very purpose. I should 
come to depend altogether on human aid ; in which 



TREADING THE WINE-PRESS. 1 27 

case my mind would go out laterally to my fellows, 
and not upward continually unto God. Every trial 
which you have that other people cannot understand 
ought to be a secret tie that binds you more closely 
and indissolubly to the throne. I doubt whether 
God ever won a soul to heaven on which He had not 
first let fall some separate drops of grief, which from 
their very nature are a secret between the soul and 
her God. This holds especially true of that sense of 
unworthiness, that haunting conviction of sinfulness, 
or a spiritual nature unrestored, which to many 
minds is the most pungent of all hidden sorrows, 
and which from its very profundity no one can share 
and few can comprehend. It is in these grapplings 
with some secret woe, where all human help is un- 
availing and where no human eye must look in, that 
the soul lays hold mightily upon God, and the 
strengthening angel comes down to her, and she 
finally prevails, and puts on victory like a robe. 
This is the highest meaning, and this the grand re- 
sult of all secret trials rightly improved. I doubt 
whether any saint who has now passed on and holds 
the waving palm in his hand, without this economy 
would ever have gained the laurel and the crown. 
To be dependent on others for sympathy and com- 
fort makes you weak ; to be self-dependent makes 
you weaker still, for that fails you in the day of your 
greatest need ; to become independent is a dream of 
your pride, for no such thing is possible ; to become 



128 SERMOA r S AND SONGS. 

dependent on God makes you strong ; yea, clothes 
you out of his own Almightiness, and draws you up 
into his safety and refuge. 

There is a practice familiarly known in the 
churches as the " relation of experiences." It is well 
sometimes, and under proper guards and limits. In- 
deed, I think with us there is no danger whatever, 
and that there is too little confluence of heart with 
heart, and too little conference on the highest 
themes. But when the whole heart's experience is 
laid open, we always feel that piety has lost its 
special grace, and that the finest affections have 
been soiled by coarse and vulgar handling. As if 
God had said distinctly, I claim your special confi- 
dence. There is a region of experience where no 
priest shall come between us, where we will tread 
the wine-press and gain the victory alone. And 
here precisely is the spot where God fastens on the 
soul the cords which grapple her closest to his em- 
brace. 

In all this course of reasoning, I have considered 
the argument addressed to those whose experience 
has not been solely on the surface of things, but has 
gone somewhat into the deeper mysteries of human 
nature. That there are natures so cold and so shal- 
low as to have no consciousness of trial so long as 
the senses are gratified and the course of events 
which bears them on has had no breaks nor eddies, 
is certainly true. There are such persons, men and 



TREADING THE WINE-PRESS. 129 

women, who have had no history but the sheerest 
commonplace story to be read by all men. What 
we say is, that every one, before he attains the Chris- 
tian heaven, must be parted off to himself, and what 
he is spiritually and what he needs must be brought 
clearly to his individual convictions. There is a 
realm of being where he must walk alone and gain 
the victory alone, before he can go up higher. We 
may lose ourselves in affairs for a while, but the 
man around whom successful, fortune has piled up 
its ingots, or whom the crowds follow with applause, 
has a spiritual need within him. And if he does not 
feel it now, he will with tenfold urgency when this 
outward show of things has crumbled away like the 
framework of a dream, and the deeper and more sub- 
lime mysteries open clearly into his consciousness. 
" Do you not see," wrote one on whom had been 
lavished all the good this outward world can possibly 
bestow, " that I am dying of melancholy in the height 
of fortune which once my imagination could scarce 
have conceived ? I have had a high relish for pleas- 
ure. I have spent years in intellectual pleasures, 
but I protest to you that every one of these condi- 
tions leaves in the mind a dismal vacuity." There 
is, indeed, one hidden and consuming woe which 
some time must prey upon peer and peasant alike, 
when each comes to himself and stands alone on his 
rock of independence, with a gulf yawning visibly 
between himself and his God. It becomes distinct 
9 



130 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

in the consciousness and makes itself audible as 
earth recedes with its shams and shows. It is the 
secret sorrow of many a heart too proud to own it to 
itself, and seeking diversion from itself by the trin- 
kets of human vanity. 

Finally, there is one passage of life through which 
we must pass alike, and in which there is no mortal 
arm to lean upon, no mortal ear in which to tell the 
secret of our troubled spirits. " All men," says an 
eloquent writer, " come into this world alone and 
leave it alone. Even a child has a dread whisper- 
ing consciousness, that if he should be called upon 
to travel into God's presence, no gentle nurse will be 
allowed to lead him by the hand, no mother to carry 
him in her arms, no little sister to share his trepida- 
tions. King and priest, warrior and maiden, philoso- 
pher and child, all must walk these mighty galleries 
alone. The solitude, therefore, which in this world 
appalls and fascinates, is but the echo of a far deeper 
solitude through which he has passed, and of another 
solitude deeper still, through which he has to pass, — 
reflex of one solitude, prefiguration of another." 

And yet this is rather the appearance of reality 
than the reality itself ; for not alone shall we tread 
those silent and solemn galleries. We shall enter 
them alone ; but happy is he who, when the curtain 
rises, shall see on the other side the opening gate in 
which stands the guiding and beckoning angel. 



THE SILENT PRAYER. 

Storms were lowering in the welkin, and the gray clouds 

thicker grew, 
And the pine-trees stood as mourners which the winds were 

sobbing through ; 

And that night we gathered closer when we heard the east 
wind blow, 
" Oh, how cold it must be yonder, sleeping out beneath the 
snow ! " 

Friends came in, and close around us stood between us and 

the storm, 
And we wept and leaned against them, with their great hearts 

beating warm. 

Words, how vain ! but words they spake not, while their 

thoughts rose warm and clear 
On their silent prayer-wings upward to the heavenly Father 

near. 

Oh, what tones there are in silence, solemn as the toll of 

bells ! 
Tolling through the heart forever, tolling through its empty 
cells ; 

Silence over all the playground, hushing childhood's merry 

glee; 
Silence in the curtained chamber, where the music warbled 

free ; 



132 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

Silence on the graves out yonder, silence round the empty 

chair ; 
But the silence speaketh never like the silence of the prayer. 

When some truce from care and sorrow in the arms of sleep 
we found, 

Dreaming dreams of little coffins, and a pale face under- 
ground, 

Came a glory down the welkin, cleaving darkness like a 

wedge ; 
As the sculptor cleaves the marble, cutting clean along the 

edge, 

So it cut the solid darkness till it touched the ground below, 
Where our little May lay sleeping underneath the winter 
snow ; 

And the glory tipped the pine-trees, and I heard the southern 

breeze 
Touch them soft as any fingers ever touched the organ keys ; 

And a low and rhythmic murmur through the heart this music 
made : 
" There is spring without the winter, where the May-flowers 
never fade." * 

Thrice and four times came the music like a distant travelled 

song, 
Coming nearer, nearer, nearer, growing clear and growing 

strong ; 

First in sweetly plaintive whispers, like a breeze o'er aspho- 
dels, 

Breaking thence in broad effulgence, like the music blown 
from shells. 



THE SILENT PR A YER. 1 3 3 

Then it waked me. Was it only some chance vision of the 

night ? 
Or the angel softly muffled lest his garments shine too 

bright ? 

Do not all the highest tokens sent in answer to our prayers, 
Come along some curtained passage down the bright and 
heavenly stairs ? 

I know nothing. Years have vanished since that night of 

wintry storm, 
When the silent prayer went upward from those great hearts 

beating warm ; 

But the answer soundeth ever o'er the graves beneath the 
snow, — 

THERE IS SPRING WITHOUT THE WINTER, WHERE THE MAY- 
FLOWERS ALWAYS BLOW. 



IX. 

THE NEW CREATION. 

2 Corinthians v. 17. If any man be in Christ, he is a new 
creature; old things are passed away ; behold, all things 
are become new. 

OO early as the middle of the second century we 
^ find that works were written against Christi- 
anity by heathen philosophers, and written, too, with 
great subtlety and skill. The keenest of these writ- 
ers makes it one of his sharpest points of objection 
that the Gospel professes to accomplish impossi- 
bilities ; that the idea of changing human nature 
and making it over is utterly absurd. To this the 
Christian apologists replied : Come and see for 
yourselves ; come into our assemblies and see what 
and who we are, and from what ranks and condi- 
tions we have been gathered. They even affirm 
that men clean gone down in corruption, and so far 
gone that the body was gone also — insane people, 
demoniacs, cripples, blind men, were restored every 
day ; the Spirit operating from within calming, heal- 
ing, and cleansing at the name of Jesus, and sending 
health through the whole moral and physical frame. 
Two things appear constantly in these early histo- 



I36 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

ries, — the depth into which human nature had sunk, 
and the power of Christianity, not to develop it, but 
to lift it up and create it anew. Indeed, the history 
of the Church for two hundred yea'rs seems a con- 
tinuation of the book of Acts, and it demonstrates 
beyond all cavil that the Gospel was not a norma] 
product of human wisdom, but a projection into 
human affairs out of God's sovereignty, out of the 
fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Christ. 

The power of the Gospel to create anew has been 
its standing miracle in all the Christian ages. It is 
its highest and most divine authentication. Celsus 
was right, looking from his own point of view. 
No mere human culture can change the nature of 
man. It can only cover over, civilize, and adorn. 
But those in whom sin has become a second nature 
are the very persons in whom the Gospel has 
wrought its most wondrous transformations, from 
Paul and Augustine down to the Wesleyan revivals 
of the last century, and the most remarkable conver- 
sions of to-day. 

In the progress of the Christian ages a great 
many sects have arisen with controversies without 
end. But in all sects, and under all forms of belief, 
so far as the Gospel has done its work, it has been 
one and the same ; the miracles which began in Pal- 
estine continued down all the centuries, changing 
not the morals and manners only, but the very nat- 
ure of sinful men. The Gospel may be obscured ; 



THE NEW CREATION. 1 37 

men may eliminate its vital truths, and put their own 
notions in their place, but so far as it is the Gospel 
it works the old miracles over again. Measures may 
differ ; Christian forms may differ. The revival sys- 
tem may be worked here, and a more staid litur- 
gical system may be worked there ; men, according 
to taste and education, may run into Methodism 
here, into High Church there, into Broad Church 
somewhere else ; the real Christian work is one 
and the same — to bring out of the chaos of human 
nature a new creation in Christ Jesus — and any- 
thing that fails of this has not Christ in it, and is 
not the Gospel. 

But let me shape the argument to some practical 
purpose. Here we are, a minister and people, jour- 
neying on through the Christian pilgrimage. Some 
of us ought to look after the evidences of this great 
renewal. Let me try to exhibit some of them. 
They come not by observation. They are not found 
where often they are looked for most. They are 
found in the silent individual consciousness, and 
there they must be sought for if at all. I discrimi- 
nate, then, change of nature from change of culture 
and manners, and show what must be the evidence 
of the new creation in Christ Jesus. 

I. The first and most obvious result is an increase 
of vital power. When men become Christians, not 
in form but in spirit, they have more manhood and 
womanhood than before. Not the quality only, but 



138 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

the quantity of being is amazingly increased. Of 
this you have a familiar illustration in the Apostles 
themselves. While they only knew Christ after the 
flesh, although He walked among them, how slow of 
apprehension, how timid and halting in their disci- 
pleship, how always on the lookout for themselves, 
and always trembling for consequences ! How to- 
tally changed after the spirit of the risen Christ 
breathed through them, opening wide their per- 
ceptions, stirring up all their faculties, giving them 
breadth, and depth, and freedom, and tongues of 
flame ! Henceforth the hard scales of Judaism fall 
away from them, and they are new men as if their 
very identity had been changed. Peter, who denied 
his Lord at the mock-trial, appears foremost at the 
Pentecostal scene, and interprets the new phenom- 
ena with an insight never had before, and with a 
tongue loosed from the thraldom of fear. Paul goes 
towards Damascus a persecuting Jew ; he comes 
from Damascus the apostle of a broad catholicity 
by which the shell of Judaism was to be shattered 
in pieces. Then he was full of hate and revenge ; 
now the heart brims over with tender love. 

So it has been since the days of Paul, where 
Christ has been known not after the flesh but after 
the spirit. Down though the first three centuries, 
young men, and even boys and girls at the age of 
fifteen, are described as passing through the ordeals 
of trial and death with a greatness of heart and a 



THE NEW CREATION. 1 39 

quickness and wisdom of reply, that amazed the 
stoic philosophers ; and yet these had been lifted 
right up from the besotted influence of pagan idol- 
atry. How and why this is, we shall no longer 
marvel when we consider that when the Holy Spirit 
quickens the faculties, it gives them freedom and 
enlargement. It takes the soul out of its limitations, 
and sets it face to -face with eternal things, and 
makes it familiar with universal truths and gigantic 
conceptions. It makes the soul free of the fear of 
man and the fear of consequences, — fills it with 
great ideas and warms it with celestial fire. 

Have you never observed how insensate men, 
who were slow of apprehension and slow of speech, 
have had their whole being replenished and < en- 
riched, when Christian truth has fairly taken hold of 
them, and a Christian experience has roused and en- 
larged the faculties ? How quick and profound af- 
terwards are the souls' intuitions, and how tongues 
of flame are given them ! How easily they break 
through the mere letter to the spirit within, and 
grasp warmly the essential truths which the under- 
standing had plodded and groped after in vain ! 
The quantity of being is vastly multiplied, for height, 
and depth, and breadth are given to its range. 

II. The next evidence of this new creation will 
be found in the quality of being, — in the style of 
thought and imagination. The behavior can be 
conformed to the best conventional rules. But there 



I40 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

the rules stop. They cannot reach the thoughts 
and imaginations of the mind. And yet, if these 
are not changed, I need not argue that there is no 
change of nature within. Will you say that no 
change is needed here, — no matter what a man 
thinks, if he only keep it to himself ? Remember 
that out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, adul- 
teries, blasphemies, and murders. And is it enough 
that their spirit and quality have been so con- 
cealed as not to disturb the vibrations of the natural 
air ? Cicero said that if men acted out their dreams 
they would be insane. He need not have talked 
of dreams, but only the thoughts and plans and 
imaginations of waking hours. What would be the 
sphere of many a goodly company if all the secret 
thoughts as they arise were projected and laid on 
the canvas as living pictures, and each saw his own 
mind out of himself ? For under the finest courtesies 
there may be the foulest spirit-drawing ; thoughts 
running on the line of foul desire ; on circumvent- 
ing the rival who stands in the way ; wishes that 
dare not come to the tongue, or ripen into purposes 
of action. And because all this unchanged realm 
of the spirit lies close upon the practical, the prac- 
tical is so often disturbed. Human nature is not 
changed unless the realm of thought be made clean ; 
so that even if our thoughts took shape around 
us upon the air as fast as they come, they would rise 
on white and unspotted wings. I know very well 



THE NEW CREATION. I4I 

that this change is not instantaneous in any one ; 
that long after conversion, the style and cast of mind 
have much of the old habit left ; that the Christian 
must drive off troops of evil suggestions every day. 
But as fast as our nature does change, our style 
of thought changes too ; and when we are really 
new creatures in Christ, we are prepared for this 
inner realm to be laid open as it must be in the 
judgment time. Then no evil can come into the 
mind, for its furniture is made pure and sweet like 
the imagery of an angel's dream. The Christian 
who really has this great renewal going on within 
him, finds the need to be less and less for control 
and watch over all the spontaneous motions of his 
nature. The man who is not regenerating finds the 
need to be greater and greater of outward restraints ; 
and age, if it come, will not be the snow crown of 
heavenly purity and grace, but the breaking down 
of guards and restraints, that what the man is may 
come more freely into the light of day. 

III. Observe now a third indication. Where 
there is a change of nature, there is a change of the 
affections. We can change our manners, our style 
of speech and action. But no human power can 
change the heart. We can disguise it, cover over 
its propensities, balance them, hold them in, but 
their intrinsic quality we cannot alter any more than 
we can alter the constitution of things. 

And perhaps you will say there is no need of 



I42 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

changing them. What is purer than infant love ? 
What is sweeter than a child's affections ? I answer, 
they are very sweet and pure, but there is some- 
thing else in the child waiting development. There 
is stored up in the heart of every human being, 
man, woman, or child, what a living writer has aptly 
termed " latent angers." They are moods and dis- 
positions that come not into our conscious being till 
we are placed amid the rivalries and temptations of 
after-life. Sometimes they make their appearance 
as the spontaneous evolution of a native depravity. 
The boy has moods which no one provoked, and 
he sometimes selects a smaller boy as the object 
of their demonstration. The same demonstrations 
from our uncleansed human nature we witness in 
the business and competitions of the world. Busi- 
ness goes wrong and the crosses and rivalries have 
stirred up the latent angers which should have ex- 
cited rather magnanimity and quickened the sense 
of honor and justice ; and these dark moods bring a 
chilling atmosphere into the house or glut their re- 
venge in cruelty to animals, — the innocent creatures 
who cannot tell the long tale of their oppressions 
and wrongs. The slaver sees his human property 
turned into manhood ; he cannot destroy the gov- 
ernment that wrought the change, so he turns upon 
the freedmen to persecute and destroy them. There 
is nothing meaner this side the bottomless pit than 
these latent angers in manifestation. They generally 



THE NEW CREATION. 1 43 

select the weak on which to expend themselves, and 
they give the fullest scope to what Macaulay de- 
scribes, — " the faculty of hating without a provoca- 
tion." It is some devil of malice that seeks to be 
gratified with the least of danger, and therefore finds 
its objects among the hidden relations of human life. 
It is the unhappiness of an unregenerate nature, and 
it would make some one else unhappy by way of re- 
venge. 

When the child who inherits this evil grows up he 
will change his method ; but if unchanged himself, 
he keeps his disposition. If he sees those around 
him more happy than himself, or richer than him- 
self, he will find some way to project his darker 
mood into their sunshine. And this he will do by 
disparaging the virtues, or studying to find spots in 
the characters of other men. Or, very likely, these 
latent angers will take another form, and if a man 
has some private pique to be gratified, he will try 
to revenge it upon the parish or upon the commu- 
nity. 

Now the affections are not changed till all this 
poison has been purged out of them, and these 
latent angers have not only been denied, but ceased 
to be ; till the heart is a spontaneous fountain of 
good-will, and leaps up at everybody's joy. Evil 
moods are shadows projected into us from the pit. 
If we act from them we fix them there, and sit down 



144 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

in their dismal shade. Resist them and look up, 
and they retire before the Divine presence till we* 
emerge out of the shadows, and the Christ diffuses 
sweetness through all the fountains of the heart ; 
and then how easy it is, as Goethe says, "to love 
God and every little child," — and all the grades be- 
tween ! 

IV. Let me describe a fourth indication of change 
of nature. You know that when the sun has just 
risen, and for a good while into the forenoon, there 
are long shadows flung towards the west and to- 
wards the north, so that a great many spots are not 
warmed and blessed with his beams. The western 
side and the northern side of things remain cold, 
and the plants and pansies will not start and grow 
there ; and spring is much longer in coming and 
getting fairly installed in these shadowy places. 
But when the sun gets up to high noon, or when 
summer gets to its solstice, all the little corners 
and northern coverts are reached and quickened ; 
and Nature shoots her shuttles through all these by- 
places, and weaves over them her carpet of green. 
Just so it is with us in the regenerate life. When 
we begin it, and Christ only slants his beams over 
us, there are some provinces of duty which we 
bravely fill, while others are left in the shadows. 
Some of life's relations are pervaded with the love 
of God ; others have not been thrilled with it at all. 



THE NEW CREATION. 1 45 

I may be a good neighbor, but not faithful to 
Christ's Church and cause. Many persons do well 
enough in their town and neighborhood, who never 
do aught for the cause of Christianity, which alone 
makes a neighborhood fit to live in. I may be 
zealous for religion, but not for humanity, or I may 
be sunny and sweet as summer to personal friends, 
but to nobody else. I may be a good Christian 
sometimes, and then relapse into heathenism, and 
so my Christian life be fragmentary and incomplete. 
Only when our sun of righteousness rises toward 
high noon, does every province of life and duty be- 
come warm with it, and the summer green pervades 
the by-places, where the frosts and the shadows had 
kept before. And then we know the meaning of the 
words : " He that is faithful in the least is faithful 
also in much, and he that is unjust in the least is 
unjust also in much." 

I have named four indications of the new creation, 
— new vital power ; new style of spontaneous 
thought ; new affections purged of latent angers, 
and all the provinces of duty pervaded and warmed 
by the noontide. Culture cannot do this. Education 
cannot do it. A one-sided Christianity, with the 
moving power of the Gospel left out, cannot do it. 
Christianity, full-orbed and unobscured always has 
done this, and always can. If it is not doing it for 
us, it is because we have not drawn upon its Al- 



146 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

mighty resources. But no truth regenerates and 
saves till it is self-applied ; when it is self-applied 
the change begins which is not complete till "old 
things are passed away and all things, are become 
new." 



THE NEW MORNING. 

Long had the tears of penitence 

From sleepless eyes been falling, 
Long had I heard the still small voice 

That through the soul kept calling ; 
One night I watched the shapeless clouds 

That o'er my mind were rolling, 
Till the clock's slow and solemn tongue 

The hour of twelve was tolling. 

Then o'er the loved disciples' page 

Was I my vigils keeping ; 
I read and prayed, and read again, 

While all the rest were sleeping ; 
And as I prayed there came a fire, 

Within me gently glowing, — 
A calm as when the drooping gales 

At hush of eve stop blowing. 

The clouds that o'er my spirit hung 

Then gave a bright forewarning ; 
They changed to white and purpling flakes 

As at the break of morning. 
And then looked through the countenance, 

Clothed in its sun-bright splendor, 
Of Him who o'er his Church of old 

Kept holy watch and tender, 



I48 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

His robe was white as flakes of snow 

When through the air descending — 
I saw the clouds before him melt, 

And rainbows o'er Him bending ; 
And then a voice — no, not a voice — 

An inward calm revealing, 
Came softly as the steps of Dawn 

O'er tranquil waters stealing. 

And ever since, that countenance 

Is on my pathway shining, — 
A Sun from out a higher sky 

Whose Light knows no declining: 
All day it falls upon my road 

And keeps my feet from straying, 
And when at night I lay me down, 

I fall asleep while praying. 



X. 

CONCERNING DEATH. 

(a sermon addressed to children.) 

Amos \ . 8. Seek Hi?n who turneth the shadow of death into 
the morning. 

CHILDREN sometimes have no interest in the 
sermon because they cannot understand it. 
There are indeed subjects of great importance which 
cannot very well be brought home to these youngest 
hearers. But there are others which they can un- 
derstand, and about which their young hearts beat 
with hopes and fears and anxieties. One of these 
subjects is death, for there are more persons who die 
in infancy and childhood than at any other age. I 
know that your hearts are full of that subject this 
morning, and that I shall be sure of your attention if 
I adopt a simple style of speech and illustration. 
And I hope none the less to interest all classes and 
ages, for there are truths which lose nothing in being 
clothed in the simplest language, and in learning 
which we all of us are children before God. 

It is a great misfortune, especially in childhood, to 
get a wrong impression about death ; for when that 



150 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

is so, your young day becomes haunted with vague 
and needless terrors, and you do not prepare for 
death or for life with intelligence and cheerfulness. 
I remember my own experience, and how the 
thought of death rested upon my childhood like a 
dark and heavy cloud that chilled its innocent joys. 
It is from a desire of saving you in part at least from 
a similar experience, that I address you upon this 
subject. And in order to understand it we will try, 
in the first place, to remove out of our way some 
false notions about it. So the sermon will have two 
parts. 

First, we will clear away some mistakes about 
death ; and then show what it really is. 

I. First, there is the false idea which we must 
leave behind, that death is a dark or a lonely passage 
from this to another world. People get this idea 
from figurative language found in hymns, in the 
Bible, and in sermons, and which is understood too 
literally. You read of " death's cold flood," of " the 
dark river," and of "the valley of the shadow of 
death." Of course it cannot be a valley and a river 
both. Figures of speech are addressed to the feel- 
ings and the imagination. They are images to repre- 
sent realities, not the realities themselves. But the 
figure in this case has often been taken for the fact 
itself, not only by children but by older persons. 
But when so taken it gives you a totally wrong im- 
pression ; for in dying you will neither go over a 



CONCERNING DEATH. 151 

river, or through a valley, nor go anywhere, as we 
shall see when we come to unfold the subject. 

Let us clear away another delusion. You would 
sometimes infer from what you read in books or 
hear in sermons, that death will bring you into the 
awful presence of God, such as will overwhelm or 
terrify. You hear of "the bar of God," and "the 
judgment-seat," as if death were a summons to some 
dread tribunal with a stern Almighty Judge sitting 
upon it. Now we know very well, both from the 
Bible and from the nature of the case, that this can- 
not be in any literal sense of the word. The only 
way to see God is by becoming pure and good, and 
if you are not pure and good you will no more see 
God in another world than you will in this. We 
approach God by becoming more like Him. He is 
near to us in Christ when we are Christ-like. We 
become conscious of his presence through Christian 
progress and regeneration. Hence we read, " Blessed 
are the pure in heart for they shall see God." 
Merely dying will not cause us to see God any more 
than a change of garments will do it, unless after 
death we shall advance more rapidly in the heavenly 
life. And then to see God will be our highest bliss. 
It will make us glad and joyous like seeing the sun 
and rejoicing in his beams. The punishment of the 
wicked is that they cannot see God, but are away 
from Him. It is his absence that we have most to 
dread. To be without God in this world, or in any 



I52 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

other, is the supreme desolation. It is being brought 
near Him that we have most to desire, as is expressed 
in the hymn you sing sometimes, — 

" Nearer, my God, to thee — nearer to thee." 

Let us clear away another delusion. We get an 
impression about death such as the heathen had, that 
it destroys the most real and substantial part of us 
and turns us into ghosts. Hence the belief in spec- 
tres ; and hence the notion that ghosts cannot be 
completely happy till they come back into the same 
body again, — a notion which the Jews brought from 
Babylon, and hence it comes into our Christian litera- 
ture. So you read on tombstones sometimes, " This 
dust shall rise again." I should be sorry to think so ; 
sorry to believe that when the body falls away from 
us we are less real and substantial beings, and not 
rather more so ; sorry to think that this world of dull 
sense and matter, beautiful as it is, is the best world 
that God has made ; sorry to think that these bodies 
of flesh and blood are the best bodies which God 
creates. Let us dismiss, then, this notion of ghostly 
existence after death, and think of it as the very 
fullness of warm and positive being, throbbing and 
blooming with a life which the pulses of these mor- 
tal bodies are too languid to measure. Hence, in all 
the Scripture scenes which give us gleams of the 
immortal life, they picture it to us not as more dim 
and shadowy, but as more bright and real, — as in 
the transfiguration scene where Moses and Elijah 
appeared in glory. 



CONCERNING DEATH. 1 53 

Sleep is another false image under which death is 
described to us. This, too, was borrowed from the 
heathen ; but how largely has it entered into Christian 
literature and affected our modes of thinking and 
speaking. People call it sleep because it appears so 
to the senses, forgetting that sometimes these ap- 
pearances are the very opposite of reality. " Asleep 
in Jesus," I have read as the epitaph of a good man, 
when the sleepiest of all people are those who fall 
away from_ Jesus, and those who are really in Him 
are kept widest awake. 

Clearing off this false imagery, we are prepared for 
the positive and glorious truth to which we are now 
coming. We have seen what death is not and what 
it will not do. Let us now see what it is and what 
it will do. 

Before I come to show what it is, perhaps I oughi 
to answer a question which you will naturally ask 
me. How do I know anything about it ? How can 
any one know about it who has never died ? Let 
me answer by saying, I suppose we know as much 
about it as we ever shall or ever can. We shall not 
know any more about dying by going through the 
process of death, for the simple reason that in the 
process itself it annihilates all sensation. A great 
many persons have experienced everything up to the 
point where sensation ceases, and then come back to 
life and told us their whole experience. More than 
this, the Bible tells us of some who passed beyond 



154 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

that point and opened their eyes upon the after 
scene and then came back and told us all about it. 
Christ was an instance of this kind. St. John was 
another — similar, though not the same. After death 
we shall know more of what is beyond ; we shall not 
know more of the fact itself for the simple reason 
that we shall not be conscious of it. We learn what 
death is from the Divine revelations and from the 
nature of the case. 

II. Death is waking up out of sleep. It is not 
sleep itself, but just the opposite, waking up out of 
sleep. Those few words probably describe it as per- 
fectly as any words can. I suppose, my young hearers, 
you experience something exactly analogous to death 
every morning. During the night your senses are 
locked fast in sleep. Still you are not unconscious. 
You see' things in your dreams, but you see them 
dimly. You work and play, and wander over fields, 
and go to see friends and friends come to see you ; 
all the while shut in to that dream-land which you 
explore at will. In that dream-world you have your 
griefs and pleasures, trials and joys. But there is an- 
other world all around you which for the time you do 
not see. Perhaps the morning sun rises and shines 
through the windows and finds you sleeping still, liv- 
ing in that world of dreams and shadows. There is 
a bright sky over you, and the green earth all around 
you, and the morning air is broken into whirls and 
eddies of song from a thousand birds, but you see 



CONCERNING DEATH. 155 

and hear nothing of all this, for sleep has locked you 
fast in that land of dreams. Good dreams they may 
be, giving you the images and impressions of the 
waking world ; but they are not that waking world 
itself, only its image and representation. But by 
and by your senses unclose, the dream-world all 
vanishes, and lo ! this other world of sky and earth, 
and woods and waters, is all given to your sight. 
How have you passed from that world of shad- 
ows into this real world of beauty and song? By 
going away somewhere ? No, but by waking up. 
You open your eyes and pass from one world into an- 
other — not by travelling, but simply by the exercise 
of another set of faculties which have waked into 
consciousness. But please to understand that you 
have not yet waked into the highest world. There 
is a brighter one yet, compared with which all this 
outward scene is a land of dreams and shadows. 
What you saw in your sleep compared with what you 
saw when you awoke, is as this world we now look 
upon compared with the one we shall see when death 
wakes us to a sight of its realities. We are in it 
now, though we sleep and dream and therefore do not 
see it. Hence we find that good books call this a 
dream, and this world a fleeting show. As in those 
lines, — 

" This life is but a fleeting show, 
For man's illusion given." 

Or, as the Psalmist has it, " Every man walketh in a 



I56 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

vain show," or, as some render, " among empty shad- 
ows." They only mean that this outward life, with 
all its shows, is unreal and dim compared with the 
one which we wake into at the touch of death. " The 
fashion of this world passeth away," says an Apostle. 
We^hut our eyes on it at death and wake up in an- 
other, just as we wake from our night dreams into 
the midst of bright realities every morning. So 
friends, when they die, do not travel off into space to 
find the spiritual world. They have a sense within 
which simply wakes up to what before was all around 
and within them, though invisible. You have souls 
within you. These souls are the immortal and sub- 
stantial part of you, though, alas ! they are now com- 
paratively asleep, and at best only dream and imagine 
what shall be hereafter. The soul is the real man, 
having its own class of faculties, though closed and 
locked in a mortal body. Death is simply the wak- 
ing up of those faculties to the bright and embracing 
world of immortality. 

And I do not know that death will be our last 
waking. I do not know but we may have deeper 
senses yet, which death now may not touch and 
open. Perhaps we have ranges of faculties, one 
within another, each with its own world and modes 
of being, so that we may keep waking up, stage af- 
ter stage, to brighter realms, for ever and ever away 
towards God, the central life and glory of all. I 
will not dogmatize ; but who shall say that we may 



CONCERNING DEATH. 157 



1 



not to all eternity, at some of its stages, die to a 
more outward life and wake up to a more inward 
and real one ? that after we have lived out the life 
of one world faithfully, a new one will open more 
brightly and objectively, where there is a higher 
order of existence, and God reveals Himself in 
diviner splendor — all coming from the successive 
waking up into intenser life of faculties that sleep 
already within us ? Be that as it may, let us lay 
it up as a first truth, Death is not a sleep, but a 
waking. This is our sleep ; our dull life in these 
sluggish bodies. Death wakes us out of this, and 
then it is morning. 

In all that I have now said, I have considered 
myself as describing death as it is to good men 
and innocent children. I do not mean to say that 
it will wake every one immediately into a higher 
and brighter scene. But it will wake each one to 
see just the world he is already in and belongs to. 
It is a great mistake to think that God will raise 
men to heaven or send them to dismal abodes, 
merely because they die. Can we not grasp this 
great truth, that men go to a good world or a bad 
one before they die, and that death only touches 
them to wake them up, and show them where they 
are ? Attend one moment and we can make this 
plain. 

Here is a man who is sleeping in a pleasant gar- 
den, embowered in fragrant shades and blooming 



I58 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

roses. Friends may be walking all around him, and 
watching his slumber, and birds of paradise may 
fling golden shadows over him from their wings. 
But he does not see all this. He is locked in his 
own world and only dreaming of it. He is asleep. 
By and by some friend comes and touches him, 
and says, " Sleep no longer ! wake to what is about 
you ! " He does wake, and by the very act of wak- 
ing becomes cognizant of all those pleasant things. 
He has not gone away somewhere to find them. 
He was among them before, and only waked up to 
see them. So it is with good men and good chil- 
dren. They are in heaven before they die in heart 
and spirit ; with God and his Christ and his an- 
gels, for these draw around the good man, — en- 
camp round about him, as the Psalmist says, and 
death only wakes him, that he may find himself 
among the sweet societies. Death comes to such as 
an angel friend — as if he would say as he touches 
them, " Sleep no more ! wake up from those earth 
dreams to these blessed realities." 

But again, there is a man asleep amid scenery 
very different from this ; in some den of wretched- 
ness, among evil companions, and perhaps angry 
words and blasphemies grate on his sleeping ear. 
He, too, is shut in to his dream-world. 

Troubled dreams they are which now disturb him, 
and in his sleep he wanders amid no green and 
grateful scenery. Where will he be when he 



CONCERNING DEATH. I 59 

awakes ? Just where he had placed himself. Amid 
evil companions, and in wretched abodes. He has 
waked up amid just the society which he covets 
and loves, and to just such pleasures as he is fitted 
to enjoy. He has not travelled away to find them. 
He was there before. Even so let us remember 
that bad men, before they die, have withdrawn from 
the communion of God and heaven and angels. 
They have travelled away from these already, and 
death only wakes them up to where they are — the 
evil companionship which they love, and the dismal 
surroundings which it creates. Bear away, them 
this momentous truth, that good deeds and pure af- 
fections make heaven ; yea, that by these you travel 
into it, and death merely opens your eyes to its 
scenery ; that evil dispositions and evil passions 
make hell ; yea, that by these you travel into it now, 
and death only opens your eyes to its scenery. 

I trust I have shown you plain enough, that death 
merely is not to be feared, but that the only mo- 
mentous question is, where death will find you. We 
dismiss the notion that after death we are to travel 
off somewhere through dreary spaces, and stop 
somewhere in unknown worlds. Our spiritual trav- 
elling is done before death. It is change of state, 
not change of place. What a blessed thought ! — 
that we are not to cross streams and dark valleys 
to find the happy abodes and peaceful homes, but 
that we may wake to higher life and find ourselves 



l6o SERMONS AND SONGS. 

among the shining ones, just as we wake out of 
a dream in the morning and find ourselves in our 
homes and families. But in order to do this, we 
must be of the same temper, spirit, and purpose. 
There is no such thing as going to heaven ; but you 
may become heavenly-minded, and then death will 
wake you out of the more sluggish existence of 
earth, to the more visible realities of a heavenly 
world. 

And how, you will ask, are we to become heav- 
enly-minded ? I have already implied how this 
may be. But to make it very plain, I present it in 
two points which you can remember and carry away. 

First, we become heavenly-minded by living to 
make others happy. That includes almost the 
whole. The employments of heaven, as we read, 
consist in making others happy. That is what is 
meant by the word angel. It is a messenger, and a 
messenger of good, sent to bestow blessings. When 
we live to bless others we become like them, mes- 
sengers of good. If the employments of earth only 
had this end in view, heaven would be brought 
down into all its affairs. If it is the aim and work 
of your life to be a blessing to others, you are liv- 
ing already the heavenly life, and you will be only 
more openly and visibly in heaven when death wakes 
you to its scenery and surroundings. 

But we cannot make others happy except we are 
good ourselves. And we cannot be good ourselves 



CONCERNING DEATH. l6l 

except as God makes us so by our communings 
with Him, as He is revealed in his Christ, and thence 
seeks to form his own image both in men and in 
little children. I present in these two points the 
pith and essence of a great many sermons and even 
whole libraries. Live to make others happy and 
heaven is already entered ; and in order to this, 
" Seek Him who turneth the shadow of death into 
the morning." 

The fact which I stated at the beginning of my 
sermon, is a very interesting one : that nearly half of 
those who die are children. In one view this de- 
presses and saddens us, for it is so much of God's 
beautiful flock taken from the homes and pleasant 
haunts of earth. But when we remember that all 
this young life is flowing into the heavens and helps 
to keep them fresh and strong, the idea is forced 
upon us that children are needed there as well as 
here, and that the homes of heaven, like those of 
earth, are not full without them. We should not 
murmur, then, when called upon to " halve the lot " 
with those above us. 

" To us, these graves ; to them, the rows 
The mystic palm-trees spring in. 
To us, the silence in the house ; 
To them, the choral singing." 



LITTLE WILLIE. WAKING UP. 

Some have thought that in the dawning, 

In our being's freshest glow, 
God is nearer little children 

Than their parents ever know, 
And that if you listen sharply, 

Better things than you can teach, 
And a sort of mystic wisdom 

Trickles through their careless speech. 

How it is, I cannot answer, 

But I knew a little child 
Who among the thyme and clover 

And the bees was running wild ; 
And he came one summer evening, 

With his ringlets o'er his eyes, 
And his hat was torn in pieces 

Chasing bees and butterflies. 

" Now 1 '11 go to bed, dear mother, 

For I 'm very tired of play ! " 
And he said his " Now I lay me " 

In a kind of careless way ; 
And he drank the cooling water 

From his little silver cup, 
And said gayly, " When it 's morning, 

May the angels take me up ! " 

Down he sank with roguish laughter 
In his little trundle bed, 



164 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

And the kindly god of slumber 
Showered poppies o'er his head. 

" What could mean his speaking strangely ? " 
Asked his musing mother then, 

" Oh 't was nothing but his prattle, — 
What could he of angels ken? 

" There he lies, how sweet and placid ! 
And his breathing comes and goes 
Like a zephyr moving softly, 

And his cheek is like a rose ; 
But his mother leaned to listen 
If his breathing could be heard ; 
" Oh," she murmured, " if the angels 
Took my darling at his word ! " 

Night within its folding mantle 

Has the sleepers both beguiled, 
And within its soft embracings 

Rest the mother and the child ; 
Up she starteth from her dreaming, 

For a sound has struck her ear, 
And it comes from little Willie 

Lying on his trundle near. 

Up she springeth, for it striketh 

On her troubled ear again, 
And his breath in louder fetches 

Travels from his lungs in pain ; 
And his eyes are fixing upward 

On some face beyond the room, 
And the blackness of the spoiler, 

From his cheek has chased the bloom. 



LITTLE WILLIE WAKING UP. 1 65 

Never more his " Now I lay me " 

Will be said from mother's knee ; 
Never more among the clover 

Will he chase the humble-bee ; 
Through the night she watched her darling, 

Now despairing, now in hope, 
And about the break of morning 

Did the angels take him up. 



XL 

THE UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 

Romans viii. 19-21. The earnest expectation of the creature 
waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the 
creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by 
reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope j be- 
cause the creature itself also shall be delivered fro?n the 
bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the chil- 
dren of God. 

I DO not know of anything out of the sayings of 
Jesus that describes with such power and unction 
the renewing energy of the Gospel, as this eighth 
chapter to the Romans. We shall not get the full 
scope of Paul's doctrine, however, without a little 
verbal explanation and criticism. This word " creat- 
ure " does not mean man exclusively ; at least I can 
give it no such narrow interpretation. It includes 
all animal existence as well ; all the dumb natures 
below man who are subject to him as the lord of the 
earth, " having dominion over the fish of the sea and 
over the fowl of the air and over every living thing 
that moveth upon the earth." And the meaning of 
the word extends yet farther, and includes insensate 
and inanimate things ; for the writer says by a bold 



1 68 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

personification, "the whole creation" groaneth and 
travaileth in pain and yearns for its deliverance. 
When we remember Paul's Rabbinical learning and 
style of conception, we cannot doubt that this is his 
thought ; that he sees inanimate nature as it were in 
sympathy with man, as if the taint of his corruption 
had run down into the lowest things and was also to 
be purged away from them, so that in the times of 
the Messiah there shall be a new earth for the abode 
of righteousness. He hears the undertones of all 
nature moaning for her deliverance from the domin- 
ion of sin. Man and animal and inanimate nature I 
understand to be all included under the phrase, " the 
whole creation" which groaneth and travaileth in 
pain. 

They are all made subject to " vanity," says the 
Apostle, not by their own will but through the will of 
the Creator. But this word " vanity," is very inade- 
quate to give his idea. He describes the same in 
the verse following as " the bondage of corruption." 
He means plainly evil in general with all its attend- 
ant sufferings, which, beginning in the nature of man, 
involves all natures below him so that when man 
shall be delivered from it, the whole creation will also 
rejoice in the deliverance and enjoy " the glorious 
liberty of the children of God." 

All this may seem visionary. Doubtless it is vis- 
ionary ; for all prophecy comes from vision, albeit 
it is vision which one day is to become reality. Let 



THE UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 1 69 

us see then in what way these splendid ideals which 
filled the Apostle's field of view are to become reali- 
ties through the power of the Christian Gospel. The 
Christian redemption takes its course downward, 
reaching man first and then all natures below him. 
Let us follow its course in this direction. 

I. " We who have the first-fruits of the Spirit 
wait for the adoption, namely, " the redemption of 
our body." The redemption of our body from what ? 
Why from these lusts and passions which make it the 
servant of sin and draw it down and away from the 
service of the soul. Our body does not mean here 
merely our material coverings but the whole outward 
man which bodies forth the spiritual nature within, 
and which is the receptacle of all our inherited de- 
pravities. This is the bondage of corruption which 
holds the soul in thraldom, and out of which the soul 
sighs for deliverance. Paul terms it in another con- 
nection "the body of death," where he describes 
man as it were split in two and striving in opposite 
directions ; as if the individual in his double con- 
sciousness were resolved into two men, one delight- 
ing supremely in the law of God, the other urging 
into captivity to the law of sin which is in "our 
members." In our modern phraseology we call these 
two the higher and the lower nature, — the former- 
receptive of the Holy Spirit and answering to its 
call, the other the abode of all our stormful and 
unclean passions and responding to the sorceries of 



170 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

the tempter. This outward or natural man, called 
the body of sin, is not made up of flesh and blood 
merely ; for flesh and blood may drop away alto- 
gether and still the spiritual body be the abode of de- 
praved passions and appetites. These material cov- 
erings which we wear obey the law of the immortal 
man within them ; let that be purged of evil and it 
will transform the whole outward nature and make 
our material clothings fit to us as our robe of right- 
eousness. In its changes and transformations it 
shall become obsequious to the soul that " delights 
in the law of God after the inward man." Matter is 
neither good nor evil except as magnetized by the 
spirit within ; and though the natural man may not 
become free at once from all taint of corruption he- 
reditary or acquired, perhaps never in this life, yet 
the full power of the Christian Gospel shall bring 
the whole gang of passions and appetites into com- 
plete quiescence, so that the motions of the regene- 
rate heart, love, mercy, compassion, charity, and good- 
will shall have their forthgoing without hindrance, 
and then the redemption of our body is complete. 

Among all the vices gendered in this "body of 
sin," cruelty, perhaps, is the worst and the most dev- 
ilish. It would be unjust to the animal to say with- 
out qualification that cruelty makes men brutal, for 
there are brutes that are not cruel, but gentle and 
harmless, and which have a sort of sympathy with 
the sufferings of others. Cruelty allies men with 



THE UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. \>]\ 

the lowest and most savage natures of the animal 
kingdom, its wolves, its tigers, and its serpents. And 
neither science nor civilization have sovereign power 
to soften or subdue its spirit. On the other hand, 
they only make its weapons more polished and keen 
and withal more destructive. They change the war- 
club first for the spear and the sword, and then for 
shot and shell. And what a spectacle has the world 
presented of the many in subjection to the few ! the 
human wolves and tigers on the kingly and priestly 
thrones ; the multitudes driven into slaughter-pens 
as if they were so many herds of animals to be ex- 
tinguished without remorse. Good heavens ! we ex- 
claim, as we follow the track of history ; is this the 
story of our race or of some other ; were these men 
and women who could feel and sympathize and 
reason and suffer, or were they the monsters of a 
geologic age before the earth had become green, and 
before the sun had begun fairly to shine ? But they 
were the material which Christianity had to work 
upon ; they were the people from which we have de- 
scended, and the first achievement of Christianity 
was to rescue the many from the cruelties of the 
few, that the human creation need no longer travail 
in pain for its deliverance. 

II. But the animal creation needed deliverance 
as much and even more ; for these are dumb na- 
tures that could not tell their wrongs, and have no 
power to redress them. The animals had no rights 



172 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

which men considered themselves bound to respect. 
And yet the susceptibility to suffering of the more 
sensitive animals is equal to, and even greater, than 
that of many human beings. They are capable, not 
only of bodily suffering, but suffering from fear, ter- 
ror, grief, anguish, and the baffled yearnings of those 
instincts which are the endowments of all animal 
natures. They are capable, too, of being brought into 
such sympathy with man as to reflect back upon him, 
not only the kindness and affection of his nature, but , 
also some flashes of his reason and intelligence. 
How desolate the earth would be without them ! 
How vacant the air if they did not winnow it with 
their wings and turn it into songs and serenades ! 
What a solitude were the woods and the groves un- 
less they were made alive with these natives that 
fill them with the signs of delight and joy, and with 
the exquisite grace of form and motion, and some- 
times with melodies more sweet than the music we 
hear in churches ! And what a helpless being were 
civilized man, unless " every living thing that moveth 
on the earth " were brought into his service and 
made obedient to his will ! Through the air, the 
earth, and the sea, the Creator has poured these 
streams of conscious life, in order that the whole uni- 
verse down even through its smallest veins shall 
throb with happiness and joy. If He had not created 
them for enjoyment, would He have organized them 
so finely and sent nerves of feeling all through them 



THE UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 1 73 

to thrill with pleasure ; would He have made the 
gambols of the squirrel exhilarating as the play of 
children upon the village green ; would He have made 
the linnet to delight in the gushes of his own song ; 
would He have given instinct to the dog mighty as 
our human affection, whose disappointment is so 
cruel that he dies of bereavement ; would He have 
put such meaning into the appealing eye and voice 
of the horse and the kine, and such a tongue in their 
groans and agonies ; would He have secreted in the 
eye-vessels of the deer those little reservoirs of 
water, to roll down his cheeks in great tear-drops of 
anguish when hunted and wounded by ruthless men ? 
Oh, if these creatures over which man has dominion 
had a language in which to send up their petitions 
and publish their oppressions and wrongs, it would 
fill quite as large a volume, and quite as thick with 
blood-stains as any book of human oppressions and 
martyrdoms. And yet the pleadings go up daily 
to the eternal mercy from this lower creation that 
groan eth and travaileth in pain together until now ! 

In the Oriental superstitions there was often an 
infusion of mercy, and they were permitted because 
they brought animals and birds, and insects even, 
into tender sympathy with humanity as if they were 
a part of it. The doctrine of transmigration taught 
that human souls had become reincarnate in the bod- 
ies of animals, where they were doing penance for 
their former sins, and so the Brahmin hears from out 



1/4 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

these animal natures muffled human voices, and sees 
human eyes, as it were, looking up and pleading for 
sympathy and protection. It was a heathen super- 
stition with a half truth in it, and this half truth has 
done in pagan lands what the Christian whole truth 
should have done long ago in ours ; for it should 
have made the brute creation so far forth partakers 
in the human redemption as to banish all need- 
less suffering down even to the insect that sports in 
the morning sunbeam. The wholesale slaughtering 
warfare which has been made upon them is not less 
horrible than our wars of race with race and nation 
with nation, and not less opposed to the millennial 
reign of peace and good-will on the earth. As long 
as man " murders their species " he will " betray his 
own ; " for the spirit of murder and treachery enters 
into him and takes possession and goes out anew to 
desolate the earth. In the new Christian civilization 
that is now dawning, many an Agassiz is to arise and 
plead the cause of those who could only plead for 
themselves in dumb agonies ; is to reveal the nature 
of these tribes below us ; which are the noxious and 
which are harmless ; which are man's allies and help- 
ers and which are not ; how death for them as for 
human beings may be deprived of its sting, and how 
every needless pang inflicted cries both to God and 
man for avenging justice. How strange that instead 
of admiring the exquisite divine workmanship in the 
wing of the bird a man should lurk in the thicket as an 



THE UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 1 75 

assassin ; instead of joining his note to her morning 
song, should delight only to turn it into a death-note 
or quench the music of the groves in innocent blood ! 
" New Studies in Natural History ! " — it is to be 
hoped they will be introduced not only into the col- 
leges but into the schools and the nurseries and the 
Sunday-schools, until all God's innocent creatures 
shall have protection under Christianity as well as 
heathenism. For there is a quasi-humanity in these 
dumb animals. Theodore Parker believed some of 
them immortal ; I trust they are not, for alas ! what 
multitudes of them would rise up in another state to 
confront their human murderers at the judgment- 
seat ! But then what human qualities are drawn out 
of them by the power of kindness ! What constancy 
and affection and gratitude that rebuke and shame 
the selfishness of men ! What sympathy with the 
beauty and grandeur in nature, and sometimes in art 
even, when what is noble and good is appealed to and 
brought into manifestation ! The horses of the cir- 
cus will keep step to strains of exhilarating music 
with a conscious delight, till you begin to wonder 
which is the more human, the horse or the mounte- 
bank that rides upon his back. The long cavalcade 
moves to martial strains, the animals quite as much 
as the men, with a pride and a glorying in their eyes 
and nostrils ; their necks " clothed with thunder " and 
their feet in rhythmic dances, as if one spirit had 
entered them all and moved them with one purpose 
and will. 



iy6 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

In that day when the savagery in men has been 
eliminated or softened down, the savagery in brute 
natures will be softened also as reflecting his own 
nature back upon him ; for there are fine invisible 
nerves that pervade all the universe and run down 
from man into all the lower creation, and when he is 
himself redeemed will draw the lower creation to- 
wards him and harmonize it with him in one great 
atonement. For in just the measure that the lion in 
man's nature lies down with the lamb, just in the 
same measure will the peace be radiated on all things 
about him. And so to fulfill the old prophecy spirit- 
ually will tend in some sort to its fulfilment literally. 

" The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, 
And the leopard shall lie down with the kid ; 
The calf and the young lion and the fatling shall be together, 
And a little child shall lead them. 
The suckling shall play upon the hole of the asp, 
And the new-weaned child lay his hand on the hiding-place of the 

adder. 
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain : 
For the land shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, 
As the waters cover the depths of the sea." 

III. But will the redemption stop here? No, it 
must keep on till all insensate and inanimate things 
as well are made partakers of it. By a bold personi- 
fication, as I understand him, the Apostle gives to the 
earth itself a sort of consciousness of the woes and 
sufferings on its surface. It is what the old prophets 
had done before, when they made all nature sym- 



THE UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. I J J 

pathize with man both in his joys and his sorrows. 
When man rejoices, " the mountains can break forth 
into singing and all the trees of the field can clap 
their hands ; " and again the innocent blood can cry 
from the ground as if the earth kept throwing it up 
and refused to drink it in. The ear of the prophet 
seemed to catch the undertones of nature and hear 
her cry, as if the earth had a voice and said : " O ye 
children of men, how long will ye turn the treasures 
which I yield to base and cruel ends ! How long 
will ye rend my bosom to find the enginery of de- 
struction, not of beneficence and mercy ! How long 
will ye dig the mines I hold in trust for you — 
the gold, the iron, the nitre and the gems — to sate 
your avarice, cruelty, and pride, and not rather to 
cover me with the arts and industries of benefice and 
peace ? How long will ye distill the juices of my 
vineyards and orchards for your drunkenness and 
revelry ? And how long must I receive the bodies 
of your murdered victims and throw them up again 
before the heavens that look down as the witnesses 
against you ? " All this, you will say, is figure ; but it 
is not all figure. There is a sort of sympathy of all 
nature with all humanity. She copies out of man 
what is in him, that he may see himself face to face. 
And so her types beneficent will grow fairer to us, and 
sparkle with a more glorious beauty as we grow 
better and drink more largely the spirit of mercy ; 
and her ugly deformities will grow more ugly if they 



178 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

become the looking-glass of our own mind. Yea, 
more, every man in some sort creates the world he 
lives in and makes the sunshine he sees about him, 
for his own spirit is the prismatic ground from which 
the light is turned into sweet colorings and reflec- 
tions of the smile of God ; while again, 

" He who has foul thoughts and a dark soul, 
Benighted walks under the midday sun, 
Himself is the own dungeon." 

And what is this world outside of us which we call 
nature but the changeable vesture which the Creator 
casts about us ? It is not fixed and dead, but a fresh 
creation of God every hour. It always has had its 
adaptations to the beings on its surface, and it always 
must have. And so man's redemption is at the same 
time the redemption of all the creatures over which 
he has dominion, and the redemption of nature 
from the curse that lay upon it, for the curse is pri- 
marily in himself. Let his own mind and heart be- 
come paradisical and he will enter paradise again, for 
its light will be on the fields, the rivers, and the 
mountains. " Instead of the thorn shall come up 
the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the 
myrtle-tree," and the three kingdoms of earth — 
man and animal and inanimate nature — be delivered 
from the bondage of corruption into the glorious 
liberty of the children of God. 

Such is the extent of the gospel redemption ! It 
moves on steadily and surely. If it has not yet in- 



THE UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 1 79 

volved you it is because you choose to withstand it 
and will not put yourself into its plastic hands. For 
it works not by magic, but by its own laws and meth- 
ods. The Jesus Christ who met Saul of Tarsus on 
his way and melted all his cruelties out of him, that 
he might become the prophet of a Gospel so humane 
and tender, has the same power over us as over him ; 
is just as near us behind these clouds of sense, and 
in a power and splendor more warm and bright than 
the Syrian noon ; and only asks of us a childlike 
surrender to his sovereign creative power, that he 
may work the same transformation, and change all 
the native fountains of gall into the milk of kindness. 



THE YOUNG HUNTER. 1 

" Come, my boy, and in the meadows 
Tend the little lambs to-day ; 
Play with them beside the brooklets 
Where they pluck the flowers so gay. 
" Mother, mother, with my bow 
To the mountains I must go." 

"Why not with the horn's brisk music 
Lead the cattle through the dells ? 
Lovely in the Alpine pastures 
Is the tinkling of the bells." 
" On the mountains with my bow, 
let me go." 

" Go and tend the flowerets, blooming 
In their garden beds, my child ; 
In the garden all is pleasant, — 
But the mountain-tops, how wild ! " 
" Let the flowerets bloom and grow, 
Mother, mother, let me go ! " 

Through the mountain's wildest regions 
The young hunter rushed away, 

Where the steep and winding pathway 
Scarcely sees the light of day, 

And before the hunter near 

Flies the swift gazelle in fear. 

1 A translation from Schiller. 



1 82 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

Climbing with a breezy motion, 
On the ribs of rock she clings ; 

O'er the deeply yawning fissures 
With a lightsome bound she springs ; 

And the hunter from below, 

Follows with his deadly bow. 

Now she gains a rocky splinter, 
Hanging from its highest steep ; 

There she sees the pathway vanish, 
And before the dreadful deep, — ■ 

Sees the fatal steep below, 

And behind, her cruel foe. 

With a look of deepest sorrow 

And beseeching agony, 
Turns she toward her cruel hunter, 

Dumbly pleading with her eye ; 
But regardless of her woe 
He levels straight the deadly bow. 

Sudden from a rocky fissure 
Rose a form of awful grace ; 

'Twas the Spirit of the Mountain, 
'T was the Genius of the place ; 

And the quivering gazelle 

With his hands he shielded well. 

Then he turned upon the hunter 

While his eyes with anger glowed 

" Must you carry death and sorrow 

Clear up here to mine abode ? 

Earth has room for all her own, 

Let my beauteous flock alone ! " 



XII. 

THE BOX OF OINTMENT. 
Mark xiv. 8. She hath done what she could. 

BY collating .the synoptics with John, we bring 
before us very distinctly the whole scene. 
Jesus enters the house of Simon weary with travel, 
and with his mind filled with images of his approach- 
ing death, and this woman comes in with a box of 
liquid balsam with which she bathes his feet, while 
with spice-waters she bathes his aching brow. The 
room is filled with the perfume. Judas reproves the 
woman for wasting the balsam, while Jesus com- 
mends her, and assures the disciples that the fra- 
grance of this deed shall yet fill the whole world. 

This woman had seen the miracles of Christ, 
and heard his heavenly speech, and been persuaded 
of his Divine character and mission. And then 
the question naturally arises, What can I do for 
him ? I, — without power, or wealth, or position in 
the world. 1 can give nothing but an expression of 
sympathy and good-will. So she seizes impulsively 
the costliest thing she had, and lavishes it upon the 
person of her Lord. It was all she could do. And 



1 84 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

when Judas rebukes the woman, Jesus rebukes his 
disciple. " Let her alone. Wherever the Gospel is 
preached in all time, this deed shall be recounted 
with it as exhaling its spirit of devoted love." She 
hath done what she could. Have the most earnest 
and self-sacrificing among you done any more ? 

This little piece of biography, however, has come 
down to us, not merely to immortalize the memory 
of this humble disciple, but to embody and illustrate 
forever the doctrine of the Master. For this doc- 
trine is preserved most perfectly in the narratives 
of the New Testament. You are not sure of the 
meaning when you get into Paul's metaphysics, who 
uses the nomenclature of the old Jewish schools ; 
but you never mistake the meaning in these scraps 
of biography, where the truth lives and breathes, and 
is fragrant through all time. 

The feeling which prompted this deed of per- 
sonal faith and affection, is one, I suppose, which 
every Christian heart is sometimes conscious of. 
What can I do for Christ ? How wide and how 
great is the work to be done, and how little is my 
share in it ! 

And there is no person whose religious experi- 
ence is any way profound, who has not been brought 
sometimes to a point where the dread account 
seems to be striking the balance and going down 
heavily against him ; some hour of painful self- 
analysis, some day when sickness laid you down, 



THE BOX OF OINTMENT 1 85 

and in the stillness of the room your past life 
seemed to stream over your memory like a flame, 
and disclose its record, somewhat as it will be dis- 
closed at the judgment-bar. At these times, what 
is done looks so indescribably poor and meagre, 
tainted with all manner of imperfection, having all 
your faults of temper put into it, and all your mis- 
takes of method, that you turn away with loathing, 
and it is not strange at all that in this state of mind 
so many have sought for peace in imputed or facti- 
tious righteousness. And then, come our failures 
every day in our efforts to build up a perfect charac- 
ter. Some taint of self is sure to get into it ; some 
invading temptation is sure to assail it, and in one 
hour lay all the flourishing structure in the dust. 
And then the old question comes back with tenfold 
pungency, How shall man be justified before God ? 
It is a very simple question, but it goes so directly to 
the very substance of the Gospel that it has been 
the main work of theology to answer it, for eighteen 
hundred years. 

But we will endeavor to grasp the principle which 
lies at the heart of this beautiful narrative ; we 
must see the Gospel truth embodied there, and 
which alone has filled the world with the perfume 
of this woman's deed, and earned the benediction of 
her Lord. 

I. The question so long debated about works, 
gets here a very definite answer. It is not the 



1 86 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

amount nor the extent of a man's well-doing, that 
makes his deeds a fragrant sacrifice unto God. I 
think the lives of the great saints and great heroes 
have sometimes a very depressing influence upon us 
who cannot be great in anything. This woman's 
life, judged so, were a total failure. But one deed 
of affection has brought her fully into light, and 
placed her example aloft to demonstrate wherever 
the Gospel is preached, that those who do what 
they can in the humblest and meanest sphere of 
duty, are equal before God with those who do the 
most, though they cover the world with blessings. 
Judged by our achievements there is poor prospect 
for any of us. Even great men, and famous men, 
out of their insignificant individualism accomplish 
little. Judged so, and falling back into their own 
proper selves, they are weak and puny enough. 
Only because they are put in representative posi- 
tions where they are exponents of something be- 
yond themselves, they become great. No mortal 
man is great in himself ; he only becomes so by rep- 
resenting some tract, great or small, of the Divine 
Providence. Just before the fact related in the text 
was transpiring, a young man, a boy, you might say, 
was raised by circumstances to the throne of the 
Caesars. He took the title of Great ; his glory 
filled the civilized world, and the age was called 
by his name. And yet this woman with her box 
of ointment has made a single deed of personal 



THE BOX OF OINTMENT. 1 87 

love to diffuse a wider and sweeter fragrance than 
all the deeds of Augustus Caesar. So you see it is 
not how much we have done, but what we have 
tried to do, that justifies us before God. He does 
not need our success to help on his infinite plan. 
That plan proceeds by our failures as by our tri- 
umphs. Both are alike to him, for He takes 
them both up, transfigures them, and weaves them 
into his cloth of gold, that makes up the warp and 
the woof of time. And I am not sure, if we look 
well at the matter, but we shall find that when the 
vast fabric has all been woven, the mistakes and 
weaknesses of men, the blunders and failures, will 
show as important threads as their most splendid 
success and victories. Even so the Gethsemanes, 
the Pharsalias, and the Bull Runs of history, help 
the Divine plan, along with the Plateas, the York- 
towns, and the Gettysburgs. Look back you who 
have worked the hardest and the longest, and see 
how little is the amount when you have summed 
it all up, and how many a man with larger machin- 
ery, by only setting it going and looking on with 
folded hands, has turned out an aggregate vastly 
more substantial and magnificent. Works ! may 
the Lord save us ! but is it strange at all that or- 
thodoxy has decided that our works, pile them up 
as we will, cannot do it ? for still they are ragged 
and incomplete, and have no rounding grace in 
them. Yes, — and when we thought to do the most 



I 88 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

for the Lord, perchance we are crippled, and all 
our schemes come to nothing through a weakened 
sinew, or a disordered nerve, or some rebellious lobe 
in the brain that refused its function. 

If you look through a magnifying glass upon one 
of the landscape paintings of Titian you will find that 
the more you magnify the more of ugliness and de- 
formity and imperfection will be revealed in it. If 
you look through the same magnifying glass upon 
any of God's works, if it be only a flower, or a snow- 
flake, you will find that the more you magnify the 
more of beauty and perfection will be revealed. And 
the reason is this : that man's weakness and limita- 
tion enter into the best of his works, and their most 
exquisite finish and grace lie only on the surface ; 
whereas in God's works, the perfection and the beauty 
open in endless perspective the more we magnify, 
where we catch dissolving views of the infinite glory. 

God will not say to us, then, when He calls us into 
judgment, Bring a specimen of your work, and let 
me see with what finish and completeness you have 
turned it out. Turn it out as we will it has no round 
and complete grace, and all our piled up manufact- 
ures cannot reach into heaven. No — but there is 
another test by which He will judge us and by which 
He judges us now. Not by what we have done, but 
by what we have tried to do shall we be judged, and 
even our everlasting destiny determined. What we 
have planned and purposed and tried to execute — 



THE BOX OF OINTMENT. 1 89 

these are the tests — no matter if in the execution 
we run against walls and barricades every hour. 
Hell is paved with good intentions, says an old the- 
ologian, in this as in other things turning the truth 
exactly upside down. Heaven is paved with good 
intentions and with nothing else. " She hath done 
what she could." Not performances, but endeavors, 
He asks of us ; and if the endeavors be honest and 
hearty, no matter, as God sees us, how ragged and 
incomplete the execution. And here we can imitate 
God and be like Him, having the same end and aim ; 
and herein He works with us and is glorified in us, — 
taking up our poor performance and weaving it into 
the woof of his infinite providence. 

And so we find that the poor woman who put 
three mites into the treasury since it was one hun- 
dred per cent, of her income, and the Mary who 
balmed his head with balsam odors, since it was all 
she could do, are the equals of him who girdles the 
globe with charities, since, though not alike in what 
they have done, they are alike in what they have 
tried to do. 

So this box of perfume has not only preserved this 
woman's deed and diffused its savor over Christen- 
dom — it has brought down and preserved with it 
this principle of gospel justification, that not by the 
grand total of your success, but by your strivings 
after it, you are to be judged at the bar of God and 
obtain his benediction of Well done. 



190 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

II. So much about works. But this is not all. 
What the faith is that saves us comes out with 
equal clearness. Do you suppose this woman could 
have made a statement of her theology that the syn- 
ods and councils would have accepted ? And yet 
here is faith most wonderful and abounding — faith 
in the sense of confiding and trusting, such confiding 
as made one give up the costliest thing she had, and 
waste it in the lavishment of affection. 

If there is anything which the New Testament 
makes clear beyond all cavil, it is that no amount 
of statement and definition constitutes that faith in 
Christ, which justifies and saves. Not by any means, 
however, would we deny that our conception of the 
Gospel may be very usefully defined and formulated 
so that we can handle it and teach it, and carry it 
about in distinct propositions, and have resting-places 
for the intellect. But formulate it as we will, we are 
still to remember, that our richest, tenderest experi- 
ences of its adorable mercy elude our statements 
and lose their flavor in our words. That, indeed, is 
the mystic meaning of the odors of this sacred balm. 
They mean the ineffable love with which all saving 
faith is fragrant. They mean that the faith in Christ 
that saves us is the faith of the heart. You cannot 
any more than this woman answer all the questions 
about the nature of Christ and his mystic union with 
the Father ; but you can, like her, see the Divine 
glory in his word and in his works by following Him 



THE BOX OF OINTMENT. 191 

in the regeneration, and to that faith comes all the 
knowledge of his nature that is living and saving. 

It is a distinguishing excellence of Christianity that 
it presents to the believer a personal object around 
which his affections cling. It is not a philosophy of 
God, but God manifest in the flesh. It is not a dry 
code of rules and morals, but morality turned into 
breathing life. How wonderful and how thrilling 
the thought ! that the Infinite Reason should become 
the word made flesh ; should come down into our 
human conditions ; wrap around it the garments 
of our humanity, and consent to receive our human 
sympathies and our personal loves. Hence it is that 
Christian faith is so unlike all other faith, expelling 
the savageness from human nature, and melting the 
ice out of the heart, because it draws into itself all 
the tenderness of personal devotion. Mr. Burke has 
said, " Nothing is harder than the heart of a meta- 
physician." So you find it when you compare Saul 
of Tarsus with Paul to the Gentiles — the first harder 
than adamant, the last tender as a woman. And yet 
his creed had not very much changed, but a personal 
Saviour crossed his path and melted all the flint 
out of him, and filled his heart till it brimmed over 
with the love of Christ. A.nd so this humble woman 
who knew nothing about what they call the hy- 
postatic union, when she saw this Divine Person 
walking through Palestine took the costliest thing 
she had and ran to bathe him with its fragrance. 



I92 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

It was heart-faith ; and the Master said, " Well 
done." 

But it lies upon us to bring out another as- 
pect of the Christian doctrine. " She hath done 
what she could." Very consoling words, if we can 
be sure they apply to us. Very pungent condemna- 
tion if they apply not, and we suffer opportunities 
to go by. The rule demands no impossibilities ; but 
it does demand that every sphere, however humble, 
shall be filled with divine endeavors. You have not 
done what you could if you have not made it the 
problem of every day ; how many burdens can I 
make lighter ? how much heart sunshine can I shed 
about me ? how much can I increase the sum of 
human blessing in the circle where my lines have 
fallen ? How easily we slide into the delusion that 
we should do a great deal more good if we had the 
means, overlooking the means that lie close about 
us ! 

There is one expression in the words of Jesus in 
the immediate context which is burdened with a 
meaning not apparent on the surface. " Let her 
alone," He says to the meddling disciple with his 
paltry arithmetic, " she hath wrought a good work 
upon me." She hath prepared me for burial. As 
if He had said, I feel better prepared for the agony 
and death before me for what this woman has done. 
I am going to the tomb balmed with the love of 
this humble disciple. " She hath wrought a good 



THE BOX OF OINTMENT 1 93 

work upon me? How wonderful, and yet how very 
natural ! The Christ stood alone ; not one of his 
disciples understood Him. It appals us, almost, to 
think of the isolation of that awful solitude. And 
yet this majestic Son of God receives the consola- 
tions of human sympathy, and goes to the cross 
soothed and sustained by the balm of the heart rep- 
resented by the perfume which this Mary pours over 
his hair. Most touchingly it betokens to us how 
much dependence there is on human sympathies 
where we least expect it and never look for it, and 
how much the humblest individual, following the 
promptings of a full heart and on the watch for oc- 
casions, may diffuse consolation and light up the 
circle where God has placed him with the sunshine 
of the soul. We should cease to be dazzled with 
the pomps and grandeurs of earth, or think that 
opportunities only come with great occasions, if 
by doing what we could we discovered the vast re- 
sources of good that lie about us, more precious 
when found and opened than mines of gold and sil- 
ver. For observe — it is not generally great benefits 
and great favors that men need from each other to 
make their burdens light and sweeten their daily 
toil. It is the cheering Godspeed, the word fitly 
spoken, the counsel inspired by brotherly kindness, 
the wisdom of experience supplied to some one who 
is losing his way ; it is the alabaster box of oint- 
ment, that makes the family, the neighborhood, the 
*3 



194 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

whole sphere in which God has made us to move, 
to be filled with the odors of the Gospel. There is 
more suffering in this world, ten thousand times 
over, from heart-wants, than from the wants of the 
body, and there is not a person who hears me who 
could not do something for another with the box of 
odors which the largess of an emperor could never 
accomplish. For there is a great deal of misery 
which is locked in and treasured up in one's own 
keeping as something which cannot be helped, but 
which the precious ointment of humane and gentle 
sympathies would wonderfully assuage, and perhaps 
entirely cure. If so great a Being as the Son of 
God was soothed and helped on his way to the cross 
by this fragrant anointing, do you think there can be 
any one who wears this humanity which He wrapt 
about him, who could not be helped in the same way, 
in those hours, and they are many, when "the 
weary weight of all this unintelligible world " hangs 
hard and heavy upon him ? You have done what 
you could, only when you have been watchful for 
occasions, and so prevented the gratings of evil for- 
tune over the hearts that beat all about you, by dif- 
fusing over them the oil of kindness. 

So we bring forth the truth which has its beauti- 
ful setting in this evangelic narrative. Briefly we 
apply it in two ways : — 

We apply it to those who waste their time in vain 
anxieties, morbid regrets, and disappointments at 



THE BOX OF OINTMENT. 195 

failure. Perhaps there are few earnest minds who 
do not find out ere the evening gathers about them 
that life has turned out very different from its early 
and brilliant promise. 

" I have lost the dream of Doing, 
And the other dream of Done ; 
The first spring in the pursuing, 
The first pride in the Begun, 
First recoil of incompletion in the face of what is won." 

But so it always must be. The same chasm be- 
tween the promise and the fulfillment is in the high- 
est heavens ; for not the angel nearest unto God 
has made his deed perfect and brought down all his 
brighest visions into practice. They have done 
what they could must be the condition of justifica- 
tion for evermore. Not the things done, but the en- 
deavor, must number us with his angels, for this 
makes the heavens themselves to be sweet and clean. 

But the sermon applies in another direction, to 
those who have powers they never try to use, beset 
with occasions they will not see, or seeing, will not 
turn to account, and to whom come the rebuke 
and condemnation : " Take the talent from him 
and give it to him that hath ten ; for to him that 
hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance, 
but from him that hath not shall be taken away even 
that which he hath." 



IDEALS. 

bright Ideals ! how ye shine, 
Aloft in realms of air ! 

Ye pour your streams of light divine 
Above our low despair. 

1 've climbed and climbed these weary years 

To come your glories nigh ; 
I 'm tired of climbing, and in tears 
Here on the earth I lie. 

As a weak child all vainly tries 

To pluck the evening star, 
So vain have been my life-long cries 

To reach up where ye are. 

Shine on, shine on through earth's dark night, 

Nor let your glories pale ! 
Some stronger soul may win the height 

Where weaker ones must fail. 

And this one thought of hope and trust 

Comes with its soothing balm, 
As here I lay my brow in dust, 

And breathe my lowly psalm, — 

That not for heights of victory won, 
But those I tried to gain, 



I98 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

Will come my gracious Lord's " Well done," 
And sweet effacing rain. 



Then on your awful heights of blue, 
Shine on, forever shine ; — ■ 

I come ! I '11 climb, I '11 fly to you, 
For endless years are mine. 



XIII. 

NO MORE SEA. 

Revelation xxi. 2. And there was no more sea.' 

r I ^HE figures of speech which we find in the Apoc- 
■*- alypse are not mere flourishes of rhetoric. 
Regard them in connection with the wonderful ex- 
perience of the writer, and we find that they sym- 
bolize the highest truths of Christianity. We must 
avoid the error of supposing Divine Inspiration 
something arbitrary and mechanical, and having no 
reference to the writers previous state of mind. 
John had been the companion of Jesus through his 
entire ministry, public and private. He drank in his 
discourses and reproduced them when the eleven 
could not understand them, and sometimes, where 
the synoptics only report him partially, or blindly, and 
in fragmentary portions, John reports with a fullness 
and intelligence that give soul to them, and bind 
them together as an organic whole. 1 The figures of 
speech which glow in our Saviour s language as the 
types of heavenly things, were preserved in the mem- 
ory of John and remained there as a living treasure, 
while the other disciples seem never to have taken 

1 Compare for instance, Marie vi. 32-56, with John vi. 



200 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

in their full meaning. So when the visions of the 
Apocalypse were opened to him, these same figures 
were unrolled before him as an objective world of 
realities. What Jesus described, John saw, not in 
written language, but in long perspectives of imagery 
that made a world in itself. For example, Jesus called 
Himself " bread from heaven," and " a fountain of 
water welling up unto everlasting life." Eat me and 
drink me was his invitation, — language which seemed 
to the disciples who stuck fast in the letter, mere in- 
coherent speech ; and they turned away from it. 
John treasured it up ; and so when the same figures 
of speech appeared in vision, he saw the tree of life 
hung with ambrosial fruits to feed the nations, and 
the river clear as crystal, " coming out of the throne 
of God and of the Lamb ; " and he heard over again 
the voice of invitation, " Ho, every one that thirsteth 
come ye to the waters ! " 

In the text and the immediate connection, if I mis- 
take not, we have another instance drawn from the 
personal experience of the Apostle. He is on a small 
desolate island off the coast of Asia Minor, — the 
island of Patmos. It was a ledge of rocks not much 
inhabited, the resort since, and perhaps then, of pi- 
rates and robbers. Hither he is banished by Domi- 
tian, the Roman emperor, and here the vision of the 
Apocalypse unrolls its panorama. There is a cave 
shown at this day which, as the monks will have it, 
was occupied by the Apostle, — a tradition quite as 



NO MORE SEA. 201 

credible, and rather more so than most of their leg- 
ends. All around him is the sea knocking against 
this rocky prison with its tumbling waves. Look 
which way he will there is the tumultuous sea ; sea 
on all sides, not wafting sweet messages, nor the 
wealth of commerce, but the booty of bandits and 
thieves. Sleep comes with the thunder of the sea 
for its lullaby, and he wakes at the music of its roar. 
The seven churches of Asia are over the sea, with 
Jesus Christ in the midst of them ; the seven golden 
candlesticks which take their light and trick their 
beams from Him. The sea, the everlasting sea, is 
between him and all that is dear to him on the earth. 
But " I was in spirit," he says, " on the Lord's day," 
and the higher world of realities broke on his vision. 
The sea rolled back its waves, away out of sight and 
out of hearing, and in place thereof he is in the 
midst of the Paradise of God — and then there was 
no more sea. 

The dreary distances that lie between the Chris- 
tian believer and the objects of his dearest hope and 
expectation are most aptly represented in all this 
symbolization. It brings this subject home to us, — 
the power of Christianity in turning our earthly Pat- 
mos into Paradise. This imagery drawn from the 
sea abounds through the whole Bible. The old Jew- 
ish legend of the Red Sea crossing on the way of the 
Hebrews to the promised land, only puts into figure 
•and parable our human experience in the journey of 



202 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

life, with the pillar of cloud or the pillar of flame to 
lead us on. The benefit of this symbolization is, that 
it interprets to our clearer consciousness much that 
else were mystical and beyond our comprehension. 
This surging sea that lies between us and the final 
rest and fruition, and how its waves are to be stilled, 
or how it shall cease to separate us from the Paradise 
of God, shall help us to-day in our interpretations. 
It represents primarily the unrest within us ; it rep- 
resents the prospect of the future as it appears to 
our weaker faith, and it represents our insulation 
and loneliness here on the earth as our friends, one 
after another, cross over the waves, or seemingly sink 
in them and disappear. And it provokes the inquiry, 
how in the highest Christian experience there shall 
be no more sea. 

I. The heart itself, in all its passions and emo- 
tions, is a troubled sea that cannot rest until quiet 
from God comes down upon the waters. There is a 
stormy ocean that lies between us and Him, and 
there is no crossing over it while its waves are up. 
Hence, his first command when He comes to us is a 
" Peace, be still." What a touching significance there 
is in that miracle on the lake of Galilee which the 
painters have tried to render — Christ stilling the 
waves ! The waves are breaking over the vessel and 
the winds are howling; the disciples are terrified 
while Jesus sleeps through the whole, and they wake 



NO MORE SEA. 203 

Him with the cry " Lord save us or we perish ! " 
And He rises and looks over the ranges of mountain 
billows and looks them down into calm. The Lord 
asleep in the ship and the ship tossing no whither ! 
So it is in our faithless piloting on the great voyage 
of life, till we call Him up and He breaks through 
our drowsy religious consciousness and his " Peace, 
be still," goes out over the tumbling billows. What 
a rebuke to the impatience and hurry and reck- 
less plunge through affairs, and the overweening 
trust in our own cunning or godless scheming with 
which the business of this world is carried on so 
largely, while the laws of Providence are lost sight 
of, and the Christ is asleep in the ship, and panic has 
seized the crew, and destruction threatens the whole ! 
And how impressively comes the lesson that just in 
the degree that our turbulence and our convulsive 
strivings have ceased, the Lord can work in us and 
for us, and make a smooth pathway for us over the 
waves. Prayer that really brings God near to us has 
the least in it of impatience and importunity. It 
is laying the command of silence on all our turbu- 
lence ; it is bringing the profoundest hush through 
the whole world within ; and then the Divine foot- 
steps are drawing near, and a Divine form comes 
walking upon the sea. Peter, foolish and impulsive 
man, was in a hurry to meet Christ, and in his ner- 
vous haste he began to sink. There is prayer so 
noisy and impetuous, so full of nervous fear, that it 



204 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

never finds God, but on the other hand sinks us 
deeper and deeper in the bathos of our doubts and 
passions, as if our noise and our waves of passion 
and unrest might drown his voice, or surge between 
us and keep Him out of sight. And there is prayer 
which is too earnest even for words, when we sink 
into the most perfect stillness and there is no more 
tossing of the deep. 

" Not for Him our violence, 
Storming at the gates of sense ; 
His the primal language, his 
The eternal silences." 

I am persuaded that we besiege the throne too 
much with our words, instead of trying to find God 
in the silence that is " golden." We incur the 
" damnation " of making long prayers. The first 
condition of finding the peace of God is a profound 
listening, after all our personal wishes have become 
speechless. I do not refer to mere musing and 
meditation, which are very apt to sink into lazy re- 
pose. I mean that highest communion with God 
which comes when our selfhood has been distin- 
guished and rebuked into silence, and our unselfish 
being through which the Lord speaks, if He speaks 
at all, our moral sense, our aspirations for heavenly 
purity, for help in serving others, is all the more 
urgent, and receives the inarticulate breathings of 
the Spirit. It is shocking irreverence to interrupt 
God in his speech ; but this we are doing all the 



NO MORE SEA. 205 

while we are piling up our words towards heaven. 
I wish in all our congregations there was a place 
for the silent prayer, and I do not know of a more 
discouraging feature of our social worship, or our 
conference and prayer-meeting, than our impatience 
of the still intervals, during which somebody, pro- 
fessedly unprepared, hastens to thump our ears with 
nonsense. What we need supremely in our daily 
ongoings, is not some new and more stirring re- 
creation, but a pause somewhere, total and profound, 
where the quiet from God can reach us as He walks 
in the cool of the day. Sometimes, when your 
words are too poor for your thought and emotion, 
the heart may reach up and lay hold of the Divine 
promises and the Divine imagery of which the Bi- 
ble is full ; and in that form the soul may be borne 
upward and lie still at the foot of the throne. It is 
we that make trouble by too much noise and com- 
motion, stirring the sea within, that casts up mire 
and dirt from the bottom. 

II. But not alone our ceaseless unrest is here 
imaged forth to us. The mystery of the endless 
Beyond is here also. Did you never, when a child, 
stand on the ocean shore, and look off and wonder 
and speculate as Columbus did, as to what lay be- 
yond that expanse of tumbling and flashing waves ? 
Viewed from the point of mere naturalism, this 
earth we live on shrinks to a little Patmos of rocks 
and caves, girded round by a great sea of mystery. 



206 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

And the imagination conjures up forms grotesque 
and frightful — just as Homer did when he sent 
Ulysses into that boundless unknown to find the 
giants and the monsters, and the hyperborean cav- 
ern that opens down into the shadows of hell, and 
among the pale spectres of departed heroes. Or 
where there is no imagination to give wing to 
thought, the vast Beyond is a total blank, the re- 
gion of emptiness and of — nothing. How mys- 
terious is this sea, with the everlasting moan of its 
waves, and the wrecks which it holds in its unfath- 
omable deeps ! and yet, beyond its horizon, beyond 
the blue line where the waves seem to touch the 
sky, the generations have disappeared ; our friends 
and kindred disappear every day, and we gaze after 
them into the boundless mystery. And what is to 
push back this line of mystery till it vanishes alto- 
gether ? Why, there are two faculties slumbering 
in our human nature, which, being touched by the 
finger of the Lord, change the whole scene till the 
line of mystery recedes and there is no more sea. 
One is the faculty of vision, and the other is the 
faculty of faith ; and sometimes one merges in the 
other. The beloved disciple had both. His faith 
was the highest and clearest of the twelve, and 
so it opened into vision ; and what his Lord de- 
scribed in figure and metaphor, he saw where the 
figure and metaphor became the living landscapes 
of the heavenly world. And then the rocky Patmos 



NO MORE SEA. 207 

is an island no more. There is a new heaven with 
its own earth, its own mountains and rivers of water. 
And who are those that walk beside them, in white 
robes, reflecting the sunshine of God ? " These are 
they who come out of great tribulation — who have 
washed their robes and made them white in the 
blood of the Lamb. They shall hunger no more, 
neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light 
on them nor any heat, for He that dwelleth in the 
midst of the throne shall feed them and lead them 
to living fountains of water and wipe away all tears 
from their eyes." The coast line has disappeared. 
This faculty of vision was not peculiar to the 
Apostle. I suppose it to be latent in every immortal 
soul, and here and there it has been touched by 
God's finger, and opened, as Jesus touched the eyes 
of the blind man and made him see. There were 
such men all through the Old Testament times, 
and the New Testament times. There were such 
men among the Greeks and among the Oriental 
nations. And there was One who had the gift with- 
out measure, — without any mists or clouds on his 
horizon ; for Jesus was " in heaven " and on the 
earth at the same time, — so that He might bring 
down to earth, and describe to men what He saw 
amid the eternal serenities, where his higher mind 
had its dwelling-place. Therefore He says, " We 
speak what we know, and testify what we have 
seen." Instead of this faculty of vision, He touches 



208 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

in us the faculty of faith, because vision would 
blind and dazzle us. When we do not prevent Him 
by our cries and our turbulence, faith rises clear and 
comprehending, for it has reason, and revelation, 
and intuition, and aspiration, all on its side ; yes, and 
the whole line of prophecy running through thou- 
sands of years. If you demand certainty, I think 
it is quite as attainable in spiritual things as in 
natural. We follow the inductive method. We 
reason from the seen to the unseen ; from facts 
carefully ascertained, to the conclusions that come 
from them. I believe Mr. Proctor in much that he 
tells me about the sun of our firmament and those 
larger suns that are farther off, and which only ap- 
pear to me as twinkling stars. I have never looked 
through his telescope, but I have faith in him as a 
careful observer, and in the methods of the spec- 
trum analysis which reveal to us the material which 
other worlds are composed of. But the authority 
on which rests our faith in worlds that transcend the 
senses, I hold to be just as unimpeachable, and in 
addition to that authority we have our own inward 
beholdings, and the aspirations of universal hu- 
manity. Beside the disclosures from above from 
those whose vision reaches beyond the shadows of 
time, and whose authority for what they see is as 
good as Mr. Proctor's for what he sees, are the in- 
stinctive perceptions of our progressive being every- 
where, and the prophesyings which rise out of it. 



NO MORE SEA. 209 

They are disturbances and attractions which show 
a spirit-world in proximity with this, ere that world 
itself breaks into our field of view. I submit to 
you, then, that the faiths of religion have the same 
authentication as the faiths of science, with confir- 
mations that science has not ; because the funda- 
mental facts of religion take in those of natural 
science, and include others which are beyond its 
range. The coast line of mystery moves off, and 
our little Patmos enlarges till it touches the borders 
of Paradise, or crosses over them. 

III. But there is a loneliness and solitude that 
come from this surrounding sea of mystery. Say 
what we will, we live here on an island, which, as our 
days increase, shuts us in to ourselves. This whole 
visible universe is fluid and fluctuating ; a " sea of 
matter" in which endless forms rise and dissolve 
and disappear. The past generations are the dust 
we tread on to-day ; and the dust we tread on to- 
day, is to clothe new generations who will build 
upon our ashes. One half of the northern conti- 
nents, so the scientists assure us, was an ice floe 
some hundred thousand years since, which buried 
extinct races of men whence no tidings have come 
to us, and the awful cycle is moving round again. 
I cannot repress a feeling of desolation in contem- 
plation of these inter-glacial generations who know 
nothing of each other ; or of the buried races of 
humanity, once warm with the fevered life that 
14 



2IO SERMONS AND SONGS. 

courses through our veins, but whose dust now 
makes up the soil we tread and the trees and flow- 
ers that grow out of it. How small is the island we 
occupy in the great ocean of universal being ! The 
whole field of authentic history is comparatively a 
very narrow space, girt round by an interminable sea 
which swallows up the generations in an oblivion no 
earthly knowledge can disturb. 

And with the generation to which we ourselves 
belong, the sphere of our kindred ties and personal 
relations keeps narrowing in till we stand on one of 
the solitary peaks, a lone rock in the ocean, with the 
hungry sea all around it. We start in life young 
and joyous, clasping hands with a great company ; 
we move on together and the company grows less 
and less ; our hands are unclasped one after an- 
other ; they on the other shore are more than they 
upon this, and the solitude grows deeper and deeper 
till there is one man who stands alone with all his 
generation gone. How solitary the condition of the 
old man we read of lately, who had passed his hun- 
dred and thirtieth year and sat sighing day after 
day, because he feared Death had forgotten him and 
left him companionless in the wide world ! The 
insulation narrows down even to a single spot that 
juts up in the great sea of being. And why do our 
friends disappear from us till we stand alone ? Be- 
cause, among other reasons, God can never speak to 
us in a great company as he can when he finds us 



NO MORE SEA. 211 

in solitude. Did you never, when you had an im- 
portant message to a friend, call him aside, take him 
out of the crowd and whisper it low in his ear ? 
Precisely so it is that the Lord deals with us when 
He comes with his weightiest and most confidential 
message. There are things which He tells us in the 
crowds where sympathizing hearts beat in concert, 
and a multitude of voices blend in one. There are 
other and deeper things which He tells us when 
He isolates us, draws us up into his confidence, 
and whispers to us what no mortal must overhear. 
There was one man who trod the earth supremely 
alone, — alone in the crowds, alone in the desert, and 
alone on the mountains, — for what depths of space 
lay between Jesus and all the people about Him ! 
And yet through the doors of his solitude what com- 
pany came ! the Father in sweetest and tenderest 
fellowship, troops of angels, the spirits of just men 
made perfect. But He did not stay on those heights 
and in that blest society. He descended from them 
and brought among the crowds and into all the ac- 
tivities of the world, the spirit which came from the 
baptism of solitude, and followed him like a halo 
along his path. And that is the way He deals with 
us. The more complete my isolation, the more pro- 
found should be my listening, assured that the Di- 
vine lips are close to my ears with a message. And 
this is just the way the great and the good who have 
attained the most have left behind the superficial 



212 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

culture, and the mere echoes back and forth which 
come from the crowds, and ascended the heights of 
an individual faith on which the peace of God rests 
forever. Though not the vision of Patmos, yet the 
faith which carries its divine scenery in the soul and 
makes us strong for duty and abolishes death, is 
there. The narrow bounds of our little island re- 
cede away, and away, till at death they disappear 
altogether, and then — there is no more sea. 

The sea of unrest, the sea of mystery, and the sea 
of separation, are to disappear in the Apocalypse of 
God. But let me not speak without qualification and 
reserve. Unrest and mystery and separation there 
must always be, though I trust all that embitters 
them here may be left behind. There is the unrest 
of the soul which is always athirst for higher things, 
for enlarging and more sufficing knowledge, and for 
deeper draughts of the River of Life. It is the un- 
rest that keeps us from moral indolence and the 
sleep of spiritual death. It is the earnest of all our 
higher attainment, but without the fever of our con- 
suming cares. There is the line of an ever-receding 
mystery as the domain of knowledge enlarges. As 
the day gains upon the twilight, the twilight shoots 
faint rays into the total darkness and makes a new 
twilight to be explored. But total darkness there 
must always be except to Him who inhabits eternity 
and fills infinity with his presence. But the mystery 



NO MOKE SEA. 213 

will no longer torment the soul with the cruel doubt 
and despair that becloud the face of God, and shut 
out his paradise from view. Faith will never be lost 
in sight ; for however high the heaven we attain, 
there will be a yet higher one for faith to apprehend 
and for the soul to reach after. The sea of mystery 
will only recede and lie on a remoter horizon. Insu- 
lation there must always be, for there can be no meet- 
ing and recognition of the friends who have gone 
before into whose society our individualism shall be 
altogether merged, or which shall keep us from those 
serene and solitary heights where God meets us 
betimes alone and takes us up into his eternal refuge. 
Unless we are to go up to these mountain peaks and 
drink there the purer ethers, society, though of the 
angels themselves, would cease to be a mutual excite- 
ment to higher things. We must dwell sometimes 
apart or we cannot dwell with others, though it be in 
heaven itself, with that giving and receiving which 
insure to society a progressive life and joy. 

The voice of the celestial multitudes, then, could it 
fall down upon us and become audible, would come 
in words of cheer. It would tell us that the Divine 
dispensations are the same for earth and heaven. 
The strengthening angel from among them would be 
the angel of Patience, and his message would be, 
"We have not only passed through the same that 
you have, but we are passing still. Unrest and Mys- 
tery and Insulation are with us as with you. They 



214 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

are the Divine ministries by which you are to come 
up hither, and by which, after you have joined us here, 
we are still to journey on forever. Be guided and 
purified by these ministries as we have been ; be 
with us in spirit even now, and then for the unrest 
in its corroding anxieties, for the mystery that im- 
prisons within the coast-line of storm and darkness, 
and for the insulation of loneliness and desertion — 

THERE IS NO MORE SEA." 



PARTED. 

A. M. M. 

How dread the silence ! — on the shore 
We stand and shout in vain ! 

The voice that cheered us once, no more 
Will answer back again. 

If sainted ones their memories keep, 
And love's most sacred vow, 

Why yawns the gulf so wide and deep 
That parts them from us now ? 

Methinks the silence speaks, " My share 

Of griefs and conflicts o'er, 
Why should the waves of mortal care 

Break on the heavenly shore ? 

' In all the works that I have done, 

My spirit pleads with thee ; 
Go finish what my hand begun, 
Then come and reign with me. 



Knocks softly at thy door ; 
A voice of deeper tone than mine 
Pleads with thee evermore. 

" And in its sure prophetic tone 
It tells of things to be, 
When to the heart bereft and lone, 
There shall be no more sea." 



NOT LOST BUT RISEN. 

M. L. P. 

" We would not call thee back " — so let them say, — 
What the lips speak the bleeding heart denies ; 
My voice, dear friend, should call thee back to-day, 
Could it but reach thy dwelling in the skies. 

For we have need of thee : thy radiant smile 
Lay like a sunbeam on this scene of care, 

And weary burdens at thy touch erewhile 

Were changed to burdens light as summer air. 

Thy pupils need thee : for thy careful hand 

Removed the thorns and scattered fragrant flowers, 

And their young minds beneath thy clear command 
Woke into conscious life their noblest powers. 

Thou needest us, dear friend : through pathways bright 
Far, far away from us thy feet have roved ; 

But thy new friends among the sons of Light 
Can never love thee more than we have loved. 

Soul to its place, dust to its kindred dust ! 

Such is the law and we will not complain, 
But ever clear of Time's corroding rust, 

Thy love we cherish till we meet again. 

For through the parting veil we see thee now, 
In thy fair clime, with faith's unclouded eye, 



NOT LOST BUT RISEN. 21? 

See thee with every "charm of mind and brow 
Baptized anew in immortality." 

And thou art risen, another, yet the same, 
Nor have we lost thee in thy heavenly birth ; 

The woman there who takes an angel's name 
Is still the friend that we have loved on earth. 



XIV. 

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AS A MEANS OF 
PROGRESS. 

Matthew xvi. 18. On this rock will I build my church, and 
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 

' I ^HIS text, perhaps, has been the occasion of 
■*- more persistent controversy than any other 
passage in the New Testament ; and vast systems of 
church government are supposed to be based on its 
authority ; and yet, when we clear the text of some 
obscurity, partly through false rendering, the mean- 
ing seems exceedingly simple and plain. The origi- 
nal word here rendered " hell " is not the one which 
describes the retribution after death. It is " hades," 
which means the realm of departed spirits gener- 
ally, without any reference to their condition. Ren- 
dered into modern language we should read, — the 
gates of the spirit-world. This, in language which 
drops the figure entirely, is simply death ; for 
death is the gate, or entrance, to the spirit-world. 
Our Saviour's declaration, then, is simply and 
clearly this, My Church shall be built on such 



220 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

foundations, that it shall never die out. It shall 
continue from age to age, and never fail from the 
midst of men. 

How wonderfully have these words been fulfilled ! 
States and empires, and human institutions of all 
kinds, have risen and fallen, while the Church re- 
mains ; and though its enemies have kept predict- 
ing its downfall, or its waning and vanishing life, it 
has lived on with cumulative power, sometimes mak- 
ing a conquest of these enemies themselves, and 
drawing them over to its side ; and its increase and 
influence were never greater or more pervasive than 
to-day. Its form, its methods, and its temper have 
changed, and will continue to change. Its founda- 
tion and its innermost essence and substance are 
ever the same. 

For what is the foundation, the " Rock," on 
which the Church of Christ is built, so strong that 
the waves of time beat against it in vain ? A very 
few words of exposition will serve to show. In 
one of those hours of clearer and higher enlighten- 
ment among his disciples, Jesus asks what the peo- 
ple are saying about Him, and how they themselves 
regard Him. The people, say his disciples, rank 
Him among the prophets. " But whom say ye 
that I am ? " Peter, whose name literally rendered 
is Rock, replies at once, "Thou art the Christ, 
the Son of the living God." On this confession 
of the Christ, Jesus replies, " Thou art Rock in- 



THE CHURCH AS A MEANS OF PROGRESS. 221 

deed, and on such a rock, that is, such a confession 
of me, I will build my Church, and so constituted 
it will never die out." That is to say, — such ac- 
knowledgment of the Christ will be the foundation 
of the Church in all ages. He is such a want of all 
humanity as the ground of faith in spiritual things, 
that this confession of Him will continue to the 
end of time. The Church so founded — this is the 
meaning — shall be such a necessity in the world's 
affairs, shall have such adaptation to the deeper 
wants of the soul, that it shall never decay. 

In unfolding this subject, we will first lay off and 
leave behind us some false or partial conceptions 
about the Church, and then come to the essential 
Church idea, and show why it lives on forever, as 
one of the necessary means of human progress. 

The idea which some people have of it seems to 
be, that its main object is to celebrate the death 
of a Jewish prophet and reformer who suffered 
martyrdom eighteen hundred years ago. This, 
with a profession of discipleship, constitutes a 
church. By and by, however, the question occurs, 
Why should we keep celebrating the death of one 
martyr, or one prophet, especially one who lived so 
long ago, when many since have taught and died 
for their race, — men of illustrious virtue and sub- 
lime self-sacrifice ? No valid or sufficient reason 
can be given. And so in some congregations the 
Church idea fades out almost entirely, and its rites 



222 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

become meaningless. Unbelievers make their as- 
saults upon it ; but always you will observe their 
blows are directed against this empty shadow, 
while they have never even caught sight of the 
substance itself. 

Again, there are diverse forms and methods, each 
claiming to belong to the true Church, and to be 
essential thereto. Who is to decide which is right ? 
The question is often asked, as if the essential 
Church of Christ were a lo, here ! or a lo, there ! 
as if any fixed form were indispensable, and not 
rather the spirit and substance whose form can 
change according to the life within, in adaptation 
to the wants of the age or the condition of men. 
Moreover, all that is said about the corruption of 
the Church pertains not to the essential Church 
idea itself, but to human weakness and depravity 
as obstacles in the way of its complete realiza- 
tion. 

I. Coming to the heart of our subject, we say, 
first, that the essential idea of a Church is that 
of a Divine Person, around which it may be gath- 
ered and organized. Abstract ideas may organize 
a school of philosophy. A Church requires a su- 
preme and living Head. And a Christian Church 
has for its Head the living Christ ; not a dead Christ 
who was buried centuries ago, but who is the Me- 
diator to-day ; in whom the soul has access to the 
Infinite Father, and a personal and conscious ex- 



FHE CHURCH AS A MEANS OF PROGRESS. 223 

perience of his abounding love. It is the Christ 
risen and glorified, and therefore nearer the mind 
and heart of the believer than he ever could be in 
the flesh. Again and again Jesus avows such 
inexistence of the Father and the Son, that to 
lose the Son is to lose the Father, while to know 
the Son is to know God with a knowledge so in- 
timate that it is like seeing Him openly. And 
this mediation of Christ was not limited within the 
thirty-three years of his sojourn in the flesh. Rather 
his incarnation was the preparation for a mediation 
more complete in behalf of all humanity till the 
end of time. "Lo! I am with you alway, even to 
the end of the world." " It is expedient for you 
that I go away, for if I go not away the Comforter 
will not come." He means evidently, that from 
the risen and glorified state, Jthe Holy Spirit was to 
come through his mediation as never before. The 
Christ, on the spiritual side, was to be so marvel- 
ously nigh, as to bring the disciple into relations 
with Him, and through Him with the Father, more 
intimate and tender than they had ever conceived. 
" I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made 
perfect in one, that the world may believe that thou 
hast sent me." 

If any one supposes that this language is that of 
metaphor, and as such is to be explained away, he 
has only to turn the pages of subsequent history 
to learn his mistake, and to find a full commentary 



224 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

upon the Saviour's words. It is a fact of church 
history more conspicuous than any other, that the 
presence and mediation of Christ, and fellowship 
with Him was altogether more plenary and sun- 
bright after his ascension than before ; that men 
who had never seen Him in the flesh, felt his 
power to mould their natures anew, and give them 
a profound consciousness of the pardoning mercy. 
" But that was a great while ago, and before the first 
enthusiasm had begun to wane." He who says 
this knows little of the course of Christian history ; 
of the deeper and deeper channels it makes for 
itself, and is making to-day. Not by open vision, 
like that of Paul and John, but by the deepest and 
warmest intuitions of believing souls, this same con- 
sciousness of the mediating Christ in the midst 
of his Church gives it power and conquest now, and 
is fulfilling the Saviour's prediction, " Lo ! I am 
with you alway." Those who say the most about 
the shortcomings and corruptions of the Church, 
and with too much truth, do not seem to be aware 
that they are urging a most weighty argument in 
behalf of its living Head, and the duty of gather- 
ing in nearer and more trustful relations around 
Him. The corruption, the errors, the cruelties of 
men ! what thick and baleful clouds has He melted 
through, and melted away, and cleared off from his 
path, as He comes down through the ages ! The 
sins and wrongs and misconceptions which gath- 



THE CHURCH AS A MEANS OF PROGRESS. 225 

ered before Him, measure somewhat the aggres- 
sive power of his truth and grace, in making a 
way through them for the. New Jerusalem to de- 
scend and be the tabernacle of God with men. 
All this He foresaw in the long perspective, and 
foretold. False and persecuting religions were to 
take his name, and profane his truth, only to be 
cleared off by its power as his own church de- 
scended and prevailed, enrobed with heavenly char- 
ities and beloved as a bride. The thickness and 
the blackness of the clouds that gather about the 
rising sun, and put bars in his way, illustrate his 
power in breaking through them, and finally clearing 
them out of sight in the warm glories of the noon- 
tide. 

God in his infinite essence can be approached by 
no finite being. He cannot come to us by moving 
his own substance into us, for that would abolish our 
own personality. He comes to us by forthgoings out 
of his own essential being, and this gives us life and 
salvation through the medium which makes tender 
adaptations to our condition. Nature is such media- 
tion ; the angel world is yet another. But the one 
perfect and all-sufficing is a Perfected Humanity, 
through which the full supply stands over against 
every want of the human heart, and through which 
the Father reveals Himself in those human qualities 
which He could transcribe into our finite natures to 
bring us into correspondency and communion with 
15 



226 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

Himself. In declaiming against the Divine Person- 
ality, there are some who forget that if man in his 
most perfect state is in the image of God, God must 
be in the image of man, and that they are trying to 
divest Him of every attribute of Divine Fatherhood, 
till faith has been emptied of all its contents and be- 
come a vanishing shade. Christ is " the image of the 
invisible God," " the first-born of the whole creation," 
in whom dwelleth " the fullness of the Godhead bod- 
ily." And as such He is the central Life around 
which his Church is gathered and organized, and 
through whom the Divine Love flows forever. 

II. Given a Divine Person around whom we can be 
organized in the bonds of discipleship, and in whose 
mediation our communion with God is full and free, 
the idea of fellowship can have its complete realiza- 
tion, — that interior fellowship of heart with heart 
and mind with mind which makes the ties of brother- 
hood something more than a theory and a name. It 
is that brotherhood of souls in which the weakness 
of each is supplied by the strength of all, in which 
our individual one-sidedness is complemented by the 
all-sidedness of the whole, in which the wants of the 
heart are supplied by a common and abounding love. 
There is the good-fellowship of the world which 
knows men only as social beings, as inhabitants of the 
earth in the enjoyment of its pleasures and friend- 
ships ; church fellowship involves the idea of human 
beings as immortal and spiritual, with deeper wants 



THE CHURCH AS A MEANS OF PROGRESS. 227 

and yearnings, and capacities for higher pleasures 
and satisfactions than the world knows of, and deeper 
need than it can supply. The Church of Christ, 
therefore, truly such, is a home for the soul where 
kindred souls are to be met, and where the great 
Friend of all souls abides in spirit, flows into all 
hearts and draws them together. Here it is that all 
artificial distinctions are prostrate, and every heart 
can open to every other heart for counsel and guid- 
ance. Here it is that the hunger of the soul for 
human and Divine love has had its richest supplies 
and satisfactions ; here it is that the weary burdens 
of this world have been made light in a common 
sympathy ; here it is that its temptations have been 
disarmed ; and here it is that the soul has found the 
opening gateway of death not a lonely and dreary 
passage, but has entered it amid loving farewells. If 
you doubt it, read the interior history of the Chris- 
tian Church, — not its ecclesiastical annals, — and 
you will find that the Christian communions have 
been the illumined summits where heaven and earth 
have met together, and the promise, " Lo, I am 
with you alway," has had its continuous fulfillment. 
Music and song here touch the deeper chords of 
sympathy, — those which chime with the songs of 
victory before the throne, that almost become audi- 
ble, and render the Church on earth and the Church 
in heaven but one communion. 

III. All this being given, the Church aggressive 



228 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

and militant, and arrayed against the evils and unbe- 
liefs of the world, is sure to appear. The disciple of 
Christ does not seek a home-centre of the heart for 
selfish ease and repose, nor for the mere luxury of fel- 
lowship. He is there invigorated and furnished for 
the work of conquest, not only over the evil in him- 
self, but over the evil in society. Fighting in our own 
name and with our own weapons, we become swollen 
with conceit and self-assertion, or we relapse into 
cowardice. When you have the whole brotherhood 
behind you, and the Christ in the midst of them all 
and inspiring them all, your personality is as nothing, 
but the spirit that breathes through the whole supplies 
your weakness and bears you along with it. What 
would you be, or what could you do in the business 
of life", if you had not a home to go back to betimes 
and to start from anew ? And how much more elastic 
your step, and how much surer your aim, when you 
know that the sympathies and thoughts of kindred 
go with you, and are ready always to give you a wel- 
come home ! But the Christian Church in the su- 
preme sense is the home of the soul ; for there the 
brotherhood of souls is organized in the name of 
Christ, and there He comes with the inheritance of 
his Spirit to keep the way ever open between earth 
and heaven. Home is the basis of all our best ac- 
tivities ; and this is just as tFue in the higher sense 
of the great Christian family as it is in the lower and 
narrower sense of our private families and affairs. It 



THE CHURCH AS A MEANS OF PROGRESS. 229 

is a place to go from as well as a place of retreat 
when wearied with work. You come back to it that 
the heart and the mind may be replenished for new 
forthgoings and conquests. There is no missionary 
spirit unless there is a Church to kindle its fires and 
keep them bright and burning. All the great re- 
forms originate in the Church, and go from it di- 
rectly or indirectly. Even those reformers who have 
repudiated the Church and denounced her for her 
short-comings, would be only empty declaimers did 
they not draw from the armory of Divine truth which 
the Church preserves and transmits to the ages. For 
if you lose the doctrine of a Divine Fatherhood and 
the doctrine of human brotherhood in Christ, who 
claims every child of God, not for this world alone, 
but for an endless life, reform sinks into measures of 
mere temporal expediency ; it is a mere plea for crea- 
ture comforts, or the battle-cry of political parties, 
and has not the sanctions of the Eternal Justice. 
What are the rights of man as a sharer only of the 
good of this world compared with those which inhere 
in his nature as an heir of immortality ? That the 
Church has failed sometimes to apply faithfully the 
great truths committed to her keeping, that she has 
failed even to understand them in all their just rela- 
tions, is only saying that her members are finite and 
human ; that there is One in the midst of her greater 
than she is, drawing her up nearer and nearer towards 
the heavenly ideals, and prophesying through endless 



230 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

time to guide the nations to their goal. And by a 
law as sure as the law of gravitation, illustrated by 
the facts of history, when men get away from the 
Christian Church and the records and treasures of 
truth of which she is the guardian, and which she 
brings down through the centuries, they lose any such 
clear and vital conception of God and humanity and 
the relations between them, and the relation of man to 
an endless future, as clothes him in angelic dignity, 
or makes him anything more than a higher developed 
animal to perish with the brute natures of which he 
is kith and kin. The grand truths which make man 
worth dying for, which make the sacrifice on Calvary, 
and the martyrdoms on all the high places of the 
earth no waste of blood, but sweet and beautiful of- 
ferings for human salvation, — these truths, if not 
lost, get exceedingly blurred and out of sight except 
as the Christian Church guards them, preaches them, 
applies them, and transmits them to after ages as 
the inheritance from a Divine Mediator. 

IV. " The gates of hell shall not prevail against 
it ; " that is to say, it will never die out of the world. 
It is eighteen hundred years since these words were 
spoken, and I want now to glance one moment at 
the signs of their fulfillment to-day. I see it stated 
on careful authority, that the ratio of increase among 
the churches who acknowledge most fully the divin- 
ity and mediatorial nature of Christ is far in advance 
of the increase of population ; while religious bodies 



THE CHURCH AS A MEANS OE PROGRESS. 231 

which have not this foundation, have no such in- 
crease, but either dwindle or fade out of existence. 
Their ratio of increase falls vastly behind that of the 
population, and points to their final extinction in the 
progress of society. This is a fact of the highest 
significance, and it disposes at once of all the decla- 
mation we hear about " the advanced ideas " that 
are to supersede the organized Christianity of to- 
day. The organized Christianity grows strong and 
pervasive where the living Christ is its central power 
and influence ; where He is left out, the fires flicker 
and die. But there is another fact still more auspi- 
cious. Mere increase of numbers is not 'always a 
sign of real progress. Increase of spiritual power 
certainly is ; the life that inspires the charities and 
humanities that overrun the lines of sect, and make 
all the denominations only the divisions of one army 
of the living God, waging battle, not against each 
other, but against sin and unbelief, and all that hin- 
ders the complete coming of Christ into the world 
to redeem and save it. These are signs of prog- 
ress, and they never shone brighter than now. The 
kingdom of Christ is not merely aggressive without 
— it comes within. It is melting out the sectarian 
hardness and exclusiveness that keep Christians 
apart, and is drawing them together in one great 
catholicity. It is the New Jerusalem descending 
from God out of heaven these eighteen hundred 
years, and now touching the earth as never before. 



232 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

It is not the conquest of one denomination over the 
rest, but Christ coming among all through an interior 
way, and bringing our partial theologies into more 
genial conformity with his own absolute Christianity. 
These are the real tokens of progress within and 
without, and they fill the earth with the signs of a 
redeemed and advancing humanity. Not that any 
denomination has reached the absolute truth as it is 
in the mind of its Author. But it is characteristic 
of the New Era, that the denominations start from 
their agreements, not their divisions ; from Christ as 
the luminous centre, and thereby come into the cur- 
rents of that new fellowship of the Spirit which 
takes the old hardness out of them and clothes them 
in the comprehending charities of the Gospel. 

Such are the signs of the continuous fulfillment of 
the prophetic words, " The gates of death will not 
prevail against it." I wish they could have a con- 
tinuous fulfillment now and here. If you would make 
this church an organized and increasing power in this 
community, you, my Christian friends, brothers and 
sisters, must do something more than sit still and 
look on from the outside. You must come into it ; 
breathe your souls into its fellowship, and assume 
your responsibilities as Christian disciples. The 
Christian Church, however, can do without you ; you 
cannot do well without it. I doubt if without it Chris- 
tianity can be a completely transforming power in your 
own hearts and homes. A confession of Christ I be- 



THE CHURCH AS A MEANS OF PROGRESS. 233 

lieve to be a prime condition of a full reception of 
Him ; for our beliefs, which are only abstract and spec- 
ulative, become indistinct and vanishing ; they are 
living and operative when we put them into our life 
before the world. " Whosoever," He says, " shall 
confess me before men, him will I also confess be- 
fore my Father which is in heaven ; but whosoever 
shall deny me before men, him will I also deny be- 
fore my Father which is in heaven." What a pro- 
found truth we have here verified in the history and 
experience of to-day ! To confess Christ heartily and 
practically is to come into a living and blissful ap- 
prehension of the Divine Fatherhood. To deny the 
Christ is to have the Divine Fatherhood obscured, 
and even the whole Divine Personality lost, or 
merged in the dumb forces of Nature. The word 
Father stands no longer for a conscious Divine In- 
telligence, and then the heavens over us are black 
as night, and man is an orphan. A confession of 
Christ brings you not only into new personal relations 
with the Father, but into such new relations with 
the whole Christian brotherhood in earth and heaven 
that the Divine life which throbs through it shall be 
yours also. For in this matter of Divine and Chris- 
tian fellowship, we must give if we would receive ; 
and if we will not give any, we must freeze in our 
isolation. He that saves his life loses it ; he that 
gives it out freely, makes it abound even to the life 
eternal. 



SONG FOR THE COMING CRISIS. 

(1858.) 

O Church of Christ, to prayer, to prayer ! lean on thy 

sacred shrine, 
And there while lowly bowing down, receive the strength 

divine : 
Then rise and let thy faithful word be healing for our 

woes, 
And let the Spirit's naming sword be lightning on thy 

foes ! 

Hark ! in the horologue of Time, God strikes the awful 

hour ! 
Zion must now stand face to face with Moloch's threat'ning 

power ; 
The subtle snare of compromise her hand and tongue that 

bound, 
Breaks clean away, and now her feet take hold on solid 

ground. 

And there she stands — aye, on the Rock where stood God's 

Church of old, 
When seas of blood dashed at her feet, and waves of 

trouble rolled, 
There let her speak in that great name which faithless 

men profane, 
And they who scoff at Freedom's Word shall wag their 

tongue in vain. 



236 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

By the blest throngs of pilgrim ghosts that haunt New 

England's air ; 
By pilgrim graves o'er all her hills and down her valleys 

fair; 
By all the pilgrim's faith in God that burns within our 

souls ; 
By every drop of pilgrim blood that through her bosom 

rolls, 

No hunters here for human prey to snuff their trail of 

blood ; 
No laws to grind the helpless poor and break the laws of 

God ; 
No tyrant's troops to line our streets or tramp our valleys 

green, 
While Bunker's shaft looks from the sky down on the 

shameful scene ! 

Ring with thy bells a swift alarm from every crashing 

spire, 
And speak with lips which God's right hand has touched 

with coals of fire ; 
Let Christ's whole Gospel be proclaimed, let God's whole 

truth be shown, 
And let the East and West respond and echo tone for 

tone. 

Then rise, O Church of Christ, arise ! shake off thy slumbers 

now, 
God's conquering strength within thy heart, his calmness 

on thy brow; 
In Christ's dear name who died for man, put all thy glories 

on ; 
No bondsman's blood upon thy robes, no stain upon thy 

lawn ! 



HYMN. 

(FOR THE ANNIVERSARY AT PLYMOUTH IN 1 853.) 

Beneath the hallowed ground where now ye tread, 
New England's first and holiest martyrs sleep, 

And ocean waves to celebrate the dead 
Lift the eternal anthems of the deep. 

And here their mighty spirits linger long, 

They walk abroad through all the hallowed air, 

And where a pulse for Freedom beats more strong, 
Know ye that pilgrim blood is coursing there. 

O ye whose sacred dust on Burial Hill 
Kind mother Earth in holy trust contains ! 

Above the cause ye loved keep watching still, 
And roll your fire through all our languid veins. 

Then from New England's hills, afar and near, 
A light shall stream in columns to the skies, 

And like a new Aurora, shall appear 
Where'er a race in chains and darkness lies. 



XV. 

IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD. 

John ii. 4. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do 
with thee f mine hour is not yet co?ne. 

THIS whole scene is abundantly significant and 
suggestive. This and one other are the only 
instances in the New Testament where we get any 
glimpse of the character and person of Mary the 
mother of Jesus. John records here the displeasure 
of Jesus at her officious intermeddling with Him 
in his work. The rebuke which his language cer- 
tainly involves was strong or mild, all depending 
upon the tone and manner of its utterance. It is 
not implied in the word "woman," for that was a 
title of honor and dignity ; and our Saviour uses 
the same word in that most tender scene at the 
cross, where He commits his mother to the care of 
John, " Woman, behold thy son ! " The words of 
rebuke in the text, rendered into the plainest Eng- 
lish, would be, " Woman, do not interfere with me 
in my work." But the words might have been 
uttered, and doubtless were, in such tones of re- 
spect as to exclude all harshness, or lack of filial 



240 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

regard. The narrative implies that a good deal 
more was said ; that this was not the first in- 
stance of interference, and that John has been very 
reticent, and thrown a veil over the weakness of 
Mary. 

You observe in all the narratives how Jesus de- 
signedly avoids calling her his mother. He never 
addresses her by that title. In another instance of 
similar interference, while Jesus was in the midst 
of one of his sublime utterances, his mother sent 
in word that she desired an interview with Him. 
The message seems to have interrupted his dis- 
course. " Thy mother and thy brethren stand with- 
out, desiring to speak with thee." But he answered, 
" Who is my mother and who are my brethren ? " 
And then, pointing to his disciples, " Behold my 
mother and my brethren ; " as if saying, I acknowl- 
edge no relations but spiritual ones, no bonds but 
those of humanity. And again, after one of those 
discourses which thrilled the multitude by its power, 
a voice broke from the crowd, " Blessed is she that 
bore thee, and the breasts which nourished thee ; " 
when Jesus put in a sort of disclaimer, " Rather 
blessed are they that hear the word of God and 
keep it." 

From all this we infer that Mary had the weak- 
nesses that belong to human nature ; that some of 
them were so prominent that they needed reproof 
and palliation ; that Jesus treats her with tender 



IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD. 24 1 

regard, not merely because he was born of her, but 
because she was a woman, brought into special per- 
sonal relations with Him, and a partaker of the 
common humanity He came to redeem. I suppose 
that by thus ignoring the maternal relation, He 
simply claims that all his endowments are from a 
Divine Fatherhood. As if He would say, " All that 
I am comes from the paternal side. No matter 
how weak, or how low down the humanity which I 
have assumed, I owe nothing to it but the cloth- 
ing through which the Divine Word is embodied 
and revealed." The nature and character of Mary 
have no more to do with the life and character of 
Jesus than those of any other woman. We do not 
know that she was exception ably good, though she 
might have been, notwithstanding her weakness. 
The Eternal Word, descending into this world to re- 
deem it, must needs be born into it ; but it received 
no education from human fathers or mothers, and 
no taint and mixture of our depravity. And so 
Jesus calls Himself " the Son of God," " the only 
begotten Son of God," but never the Son of Mary. 
By virtue of his human birth, He calls himself " the 
Son of man," — a generic title, importing that He 
inherits not the nature of one man, but of humanity 
in the complex, that He might become conscious of 
the whole range of wants, sufferings, and tempta- 
tions, which through Him were to be supplied with 
strength from the fullness of the Godhead, 



242 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

The ideals of a true and perfect womanhood, what 
they are and whence they should be sought, is a sub- 
ject suggested by the text, and one of exceeding in- 
terest. If once we can put away from us the ideals 
which are false and illusive, and bring fairly before 
us those which are true and inspiring, we shall do 
much to solve one of the problems of the day. Let 
us enlarge for a few moments on each of these two 
topics. First the false ideals and then the true ones. 

I. Perhaps four fifths of the Christian Church re- 
lapsed early into Mariolatry, and they remain in that 
worship still. Not the Roman Church only, but the 
Greek, and portions of the Protestant, draw hence 
their ideals of perfect womanhood. The reasons of 
this are very obvious. The office of Christ as a Me- 
diator had been made so official and technical and 
exclusively theological as to take Him out of the 
sphere of our humanity, or any genial relations with 
it. So the want was still felt of a Mediator ; one of 
tenderness and gentleness and humane sympathies ; 
such as do not belong to our coarser manhood, but 
which are the very essence and inspiration of the 
highest and truest womanhood. And Mary- comes 
in to supply the place ; not any Mary that ever lived, 
but one who embodied the highest conception which 
the Church then had of the perfect woman. And it 
is vain to say that the influence of this idolatry was 
altogether bad. In times of cruelty and theologic 
hate, what a persuasive must it have been to tolerance 



IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD. 243 

and mercy ! When the priesthood was corrupt, and 
when men like Charlemagne, who were held as the 
models of virtue, had the stains of blood on their 
garments, there was at least one form of human nat- 
ure which was held aloft and worshipped, and which 
breathed of gentleness and charity. Not any Mary 
that ever lived, but an ideal womanhood, gathering 
into itself some of the holiest feminine attributes, 
Mercy and Charity and humane sympathies, was en- 
throned among the idols of a corrupt and sensuous 
age ; and when the attributes of God and of Christ 
were both lost sight of, and the means of knowing 
them from the Scriptures were in the keeping of a 
corrupt priesthood, that sweet and beautiful ideal of 
womanhood shed its lustre among the cruelties of 
dungeons, scaffolds, and battle-fields, and did some- 
thing to soften and to mitigate. It hung on the 
walls of churches ; it melted through the imagina- 
tions of cruel and sensuous men as a heavenly vis- 
ion pleading for humanity. 

On the other hand, how defective and one-sided 
are these ideals, and how liable to abuse and degra- 
dation, inspiring the devotion of cloisters and nun- 
neries, and a dried up virtue that wants healthful 
blood and out-door freshness ! The saints after this 
model became intensely conscious of their piety and 
sanctity, wore halos around their heads, with a roll- 
ing up of the eyes, as if they were too good for the 
earth, and did not really belong to it. No inspira- 



244 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

tion comes hence, infusing energy for the great con- 
flicts of life and strength under its burdens. 

In one of the most celebrated art galleries, after 
passing one picture after another of saints in atti- 
tudes, with halos about them, holy families, and Ma- 
donnas in robes of artificial sanctity, you come at 
length to one of the grand historic scenes, setting 
forth the old Roman idea of womanly virtue. It is 
the death of Virginia. On the other side is Junius 
Brutus passing the death-sentence on his two sons 
for treason ; all suggesting how clearly and sublimely 
the old stoical virtue could rise above the weakness 
of kindred ties and the bribes of self-interest. Its 
ideals were not the highest, but our weak, senti- 
mental Christianity has hardly improved upon them. 
I think they come in as a mighty relief after those 
other models of cloister piety and devotion kept and 
nourished for shrines and postures. 

II. But false ideals all aside, we come to the ques- 
tion, Where shall we find the models of that woman- 
hood most worthy of our admiration ? Christ was a 
pattern of the perfect man ; where, if not in the 
mother of Christ, shall we find the pattern of the 
perfect woman ? Shall we look along the ages and 
take the Virginias, the Rebeccas, the Marys, and the 
Joans, put them all together in order to make out the 
ideal which we are in quest of, very much as the 
sculptor takes a grace here and a contour there from 
the best patterns he can find ? The very question 



IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD. 245 

suggests how deceptive are all models and all outside 
patterns, and that the standard towards which we as- 
pire is to be sought in some other way. Christ, it is 
true, is the perfect man, the full-orbed humanity. 
But even He does not present Himself to us as a 
model. He never asks us to imitate Him. Imita- 
tion of other people's virtue is nothing but a kind of 
mimicry after all, and never opens in the heart the 
original springs of piety and goodness. " If any man 
thirst," says Jesus, " let him come unto me and drink ; 
for he that believeth on me, out of his heart shall flow 
rivers of living water." Inspiration, not imitation, is 
the privilege of the hearty Christian believer ; and 
inspiration unfolds all the best possibilities of our 
nature whether of men or women ; unfolds each on 
its own line of organic growth and development. 
It does not make women into men, nor men into 
women ; but it makes men more manly and women 
more womanly, drawing each into those excellencies 
and perfections for which the hand of the Creator 
originally attuned their natures. Neither men nor 
women are called to do just the things that Christ 
did, and do them in just the way He did ; and if we 
attempted this our mimicry would appear fantastic 
enough. But Jesus as Mediator draws us up into full 
intercourse and communion with the Divine Nature 
itself, in which are all the perfections of both halves 
of our finite humanity. Avoid the absurdity of mak- 
ing Christ one God and the father another God ; 



246 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

but regard Christ as the manifestation of the whole 
Divine Nature, all its energy, all its sweetness, and 
all its tenderness ; the Fountain of all that is good 
in father or mother, or brother or sister, or man or 
woman or child, and then the worship of God through 
Christ brings forth the graces of each one's nature 
that belong to that nature and none other. The vine 
and the oak which it clasps and adorns both drink 
the same sunbeams ; one does not become the other 
by growth and culture, but each grows into its own 
kind of perfection and grace. Woman is capable of 
a kind of perfection that men never can reach ; of 
diviner sympathies especially as they embrace in- 
fancy or childhood, divining its wants and woes and 
all the fit ministrations to human suffering. Men 
are capable of a kind of perfection that women are 
not ; I will not say a lower kind, but more outer 
and tangible, and which pertains more to the under- 
standing than the heart. Women reach conclusions 
through intuition and perception, men through logic 
and induction — a slower and more circuitous way. 
And even in the discharge of the same duties, each 
sex has its own style of doing things, and when one 
undertakes the style of the other they cease to act 
themselves. The evil of all man worship or woman 
worship is to make the worshippers one-sided and 
untrue to themselves, and if they attain morbidly in 
one direction they are sure to become lean and 
shrunken somewhere else. The ideals which we 



IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD. 247 

ought therefore to follow are those which dawn con- 
tinually upon our rising faith as they are let down to 
us every day out of heaven. They are on some line 
of action to which you will be sure to be called as a 
follower of Christ ; called by the spirit of Christ 
within you, and the standard of duty which shines on 
before you. They are not patterns which you get 
from outside ; they are the angels of God's presence 
that beckon from above and call, " This is the way, 
walk ye in it." Perhaps it is a way which nobody 
ever walked before with the same step, because abil- 
ity and opportunity have not been given to others 
as to you. 

All the disputes about the equality of the sexes 
come from the conceit which some have that manly 
excellence is of a higher order than womanly ; that 
the head is nobler than the heart ; that intellect is 
a higher attribute than love ; that muscular power 
ranks higher than moral power ; that the mind which 
plans for brilliant campaigns and great military 
achievements, or for building roads and bridges, and 
making money and subduing physical nature, ranks 
higher than the spirit of goodness, without which all 
power is only brute force, and the highest intellec- 
tion only contrivance for pomp and show. It is bad 
enough for men to claim this supremacy ; it is worse 
when woman is seized with the same ambition and 
tries to grasp it, instead of accepting the royalty 
which God and nature have given her, which wears 



248 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

the highest crown, and which rules by diviner and 
less vulgar methods. God is love ; and love is his 
highest attribute, because it inspires and gives direc- 
tion to all the other attributes. It is this which is 
given supremely to woman, and she descends to a 
lower position whenever she renounces its preroga- 
tives. 

What is it to be a follower of Christ, then ? It is 
to be brought in Him and through Him into a more 
full communion with God, so that out of the Divine 
Nature our own natures are supplied and impleted, 
and all their heavenly possibilities are unfolded. 
Men gain strength and energy to be men. Women 
gain strength and energy to be women. Matrons be- 
come better mothers when they put on Christ, be- 
cause the parental instinct is then purged of selfish- 
ness and gains wisdom and direction. Maidens rise 
to a purer and nobler maidenhood when they put on 
Christ, because then they forget themselves in a 
Christian calling that gives scope to all the womanly 
graces and virtues, and they are saved from the van- 
ities of worldly show. The Mary Wares and Car- 
penters, or the Marys of any age, do not follow their 
Christian calling because some outside pattern has 
been held before them, but because through the 
Christ they had a profounder baptism into the Di- 
vine love, and were inspired to do the promptings 
which it gave them. What the Church needs now 
and ever is inspiration ; the soul of goodness put 



IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD. 249 

into its enterprises, its charities, its schools, its wor- 
ship, its missions, its forthgoings to save the world 
and redeem it ; and woman is doubly responsible for 
this, because her nature is, or should be, more recep- 
tive of the Divine goodness, and ought to make 
channels for it through all the ways of the world. 

There is a very beautiful custom observed in 
Catholic countries, of keeping the churches open on 
week days, so that people can come in and kneel 
and worship at any hour, and go away strengthened 
and refreshed for their duties. Opposite the great 
York Minster is a Catholic church, famous as the 
one in which Guy Fawks was baptized. Beside the 
high altar is a statue of Christ, in the features of 
which are more of benignity and Divine Majesty 
than I ever saw put into marble. It was very touch- 
ing to see the market women from the street, one of 
them halt and lame, totter along the aisles, and come 
and kneel before it, and then go away with bright- 
ened features to their humble work. In a remote 
corner of the church was a shrine to the Virgin, and 
there went the delicate ladies to kneel and mutter 
for the hour, not imbibing strength for the burdens 
of the day, but to get a draught of sentimentalism 
for an indolent devotion. And this, I think, repre- 
sents two kinds of worship, one bearing up the soul 
through a full-orbed and perfect humanity to the 
Father of all, the other exhaling in raptures before 
ideals which have the strength and majesty taken 



2 SO SERMONS AND SONGS. 

out and our finite weakness put in their place. One 
ends in mere sentiment ; the other goes with us 
where we take up our burdens, and makes them 
light and easy. 

As to the ideals needed most for the womanhood 
of our times, and the work of to-day, I think there 
is no room for mistake. Men become coarse, earthly, 
and cruel, where women are frivolous, selfish, and 
worldly. Men become brave, just, and honorable, 
where women shed abroad the grace, the charity, 
and the self-sacrificing spirit of the Gospel. Family 
affections become enlarged and ennobled into phi- 
lanthropy with maternal and sisterly tenderness 
' breathed into them, where Christian womanhood 
presides in the household. Childhood takes the im- 
press of heaven and grows into the bright image of 
God, if unfolded beneath the moral power and mould- 
ing of a Christian womanhood. It is apt to take on 
the coarseness of masculine vices and depravities, 
where mothers, renounce their charge to a lower 
order of minds that they may have time for pleasure 
and amusement. Compassion towards all that suffer, 
whether man or animal, or bird or insect ; intoler- 
ance of any needless pang in any creature that 
breathes, — these are full and operative where wom- 
an's nature has its rightful baptism in the Divine 
Love, and this compassion fails from its channels, just 
in the degree that woman fails from the duties of her 
sphere. Higher than any sphere which modern dis- 



IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD. 25 1 

covery can open to her, is this inmost and highest 
one whose shrine has no fit priesthood when she 
fails from it, and through which come the unction 
and the inspiration in all the lower departments of 
human activity. The freedom which woman should 
demand is to do and to be all that Christianity in its 
full reception inspires her to do and to be ; for then 
she will demand nothing which is unwomanly or 
which is not congenerous with her nature in its pure 
and heavenly development. No danger then that 
she will cease to be herself, or that she will fail to 
fulfill the demands of her whole being. The work 
of moulding the faculties, when young and tender, of 
evoking the powers of childhood, whether in fami- 
lies or schools, is preeminently hers ; and it is a 
higher work, because a more interior one than that 
which is done in legislatures or on battle-fields ; for 
without it the legislatures and the battle-fields would 
be lacking in the virtue and the consecration which 
save them from becoming the scenes for the wran- 
gles and strifes of older children. " Behold my 
mother and my brethren," is still the benediction of 
the Master upon those who are doing the Father's 
will, each according to the methods of his original 
genius, enlarged and sanctified by the Christ within. 
Men have lectured and legislated upon intemper- 
ance, one of the crying evils of the day, and from 
which women suffer more than men, because their 
sensibilities are susceptible of deeper and more cruel 



252 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

wounds. We have long felt that this reform needed 
a soul to it, a moral suasion which could find deeper 
springs of action and melt through the sordid self- 
ishness of men with diviner touches. Do not say 
that woman may not supply the very element we 
need because of the irregularities which thus far 
have attended the new methods of reform. There 
are always irregularities where the deepest inspira- 
tion and the loudest cry of God through the soul 
must beat against the iron bars of a brute conserva- 
tism, and break through them to get free. What 
real men ought to say to these women is, as it seems 
to me, " Godspeed you in your work ! May you 
succeed where we have failed ! We will do our best 
to prepare the way for you, that the voice of the 
Spirit may have its utterance and sweep this evil 
from the land ! " 

Ideals of womanhood ! They come down from 
heaven every day and every hour ; they grow 
brighter and warmer as your Christian conscious- 
ness grows clearer. Follow them as the angels of 
God's presence, no matter into what new and orig- 
inal fields of beneficence they beckon you ; no mat- 
ter what barriers must be broken through, if the 
voice of the Christ in you is calling you to work 
with Him and gain the victory ! Do you say that 
the world will laugh, or that public opinion bars 
you from your appropriate sphere ? But what is the 
laugh of the world but the " crackling of thorns 



IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD. 2$$ 

under a pot ? " And as for public opinion, it is what 
in large measure you make yourselves, and would to 
God you had made it better ! More than any man 
or all the men together, you make the fashions of 
the time, and you make them run to show, and the 
lavishment of expense on the flaring vanities of 
earth, and take away just so much from the higher 
culture, and from the means of making light the 
weary burdens of life. There are reforms yet to be 
achieved, which require no renunciation of Chris- 
tian womanhood, but demand that it be put on in 
its completeness and beauty, as you follow Christ 
in the regeneration. 



GIRLHOOD AND WOMANHOOD. 

i. 

What strange magic brings before me that old school- 
house on the green, 

While the dusk of time is gathering over all that lies be- 
tween ? 

Seats adorned with rustic carvings, shaky clapboards old 

and gray, 
Smoky walls and broken windows and the pig-weeds by the 

way, 

Little griefs of little children felt beneath the tyrant's 

rule, 
Or the big boys', who were hazers of the ancient country 

school. 

All the squalor and the sorrow of that earliest fairy-land, 
Change within the magic sunshine ; all the dirt is golden 
sand. 

What were pedagogues and hazers ! faces bright were al- 
ways there, 

And the morning came new risen from the face of Ellen 
Clare ; 

She the tall and beaming maiden, whom we always ran to 

meet, 
Just escaping from our cradles on our little twinkling feet. 



256 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

They may sing of gentle ladies holding court at castle 

hall, 
But our country-girl was peerless, and more gentle than 

they all : 

For she brought the bloom of orchards in the glow upon 

her cheek, 
And we thought of golden robins every time we heard 

her speak ; 

As she smoothed the tear- wrought channels where our 

sorrow had its flow, 
And brought sunshine o'er the faces which the imps had 

scoured with snow. 

Dancing-schools, and dancing-masters ! — pastures with the 

lambs at play, 
Or the breezy heights and ridges, where we climbed the 

summer's day. 

Singing-schools! — among the orchards, with the birds at 
matin-time, 

Or the morning stars together singing to their march sub- 
lime. 

So she danced with breezy motion, breezy as the light ga- 
zelle's, 

And her singing soared the sweetest over all the village 
belles. 

O, the memories of our childhood coming thick and mani- 
fold, 

Drifting westward down the valleys fleecy clouds that turn 
to gold ! 



GIRLHOOD AND WOMANHOOD. 2$7 

II. 

They wandered east, they wandered west, 

On prairie, shore, and sea ; 
One sleeps beneath the ocean's breast, 
And some have found the last long rest 

Beneath the willow-tree. 

Beside yon hill that cuts the air 

With its blue curving line, 
There lives a maid ; she once was fair, — 
She 's fairer now ; her silver hair 

Has caught the heavenly shine. 

Her song of cheer still rises clear, 

In hymns of softer strain ; 
Where sorrow sheds the bitter tear, 
Or where the spoiler's step draws near 

The couch of mortal pain. 

Where anguish needs the cooling palm, 

Or worn and fevered care ; 
Where sin pines sore for mercy's balm 
There will you find, through storm and calm, 

The paths of Ellen Clare ; 

With heart to weep with him that weeps, 

And love with him that loves : — 
Why one deep chord its silence keeps 
Ask not of me; ask him who sleeps 

In ocean's coral groves. 

O'er Ellen's cot, on yonder height 
The evening star stands still, 
17 



258 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

And flames in larger lustre bright, 
Before it looks a last good-night 
And drops behind the hill. 

Even so thy life, O lady blest, 
Pours its last beauteous ray ; 
Its evening glories are its best, 
As sinking to thy heavenly rest. 
They melt from earth away. 



XVI. 

THE DIVINE LIFE-PLAN. 

Romans viii. 28-30. All things work together for good, to 
them, that love God, to them who are the called according to 
his purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did 
predestinate ...... whom He did predestinate, them He 

also called: and whom He called, thein He also justified : 
and whom He justified, them He also glorified. 

IF a peasant, on some clear evening, were to look 
up to the heavens, he would see nothing but a 
wilderness of lights, — stars and star-dust, strown 
at random through the fields of space. The main 
work of science is to detect in this wilderness the 
principle of arrangement. And as far as this is 
done, every drop of star-dust becomes part of a 
system, and there is no atom that is not in its 
place, and doing its work in the universe. Just so 
it is with events ; with all that enters into human 
history and experience. Our human life seems at 
first chaotic, and things happen to us according to 
no principle of order. But all our later experience 
goes to detect this order, and could we see the 
whole, no event would stand separate, and all the 
star-dust would be formed into worlds. 



260 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

It. is not much to have a mere general acknowl- 
edgment of a Divine Providence. There is no 
Christian doctrine more abused and perverted, for 
there is hardly any calamity which flows from hu- 
man wickedness which is not laid off upon the 
Providence of God. We are very apt to lose one 
grand and vital distinction. There are two kinds 
of Providence, acting according to the free-will and 
purpose of man. There is the Providence which 
leads on, marks out the way, urges, compels even, 
by shutting us off from one line of action, and 
shutting us in to another. Then there is the Prov- 
idence which only follows ; which allows a thing to 
be done, but does not lead on to -its doing; which 
will not break in upon man's agency, though he 
plunge into the blackest crime, but goes after and 
mitigates. Hence, there is a directing Providence, 
and a preventive Providence. One leads us if we 
will be led. The other follows us whether we 
will be led or not, keeps its hand upon us, and sub- 
ordinates even our crimes to its eternal purpose. 
You will observe in the text, it is the Providence 
that leads and draws us on which is described ; not 
that which would prevent merely, but which would 
attract and win ; not Calvin's dogma of decrees, 
but God's adaptations to man, by arranging the 
events of life according to his supreme and heav- 
enly order. 

I. A divine plan is distinctly marked out, within 



THE DIVINE LIFE-PLAN. 26 1 

which every regenerating man is drawn and kept by 
a chain that cannot break. Mark the steps. " Whom 
He did foreknow, He also did predestinate : whom 
He did predestinate, them He also called : whom He 
called, them He also justified : and whom He justified, 
them He also glorified " Let us pause a little upon 
these terms. They have been petrified into dogmas. 
But rightly rendered, they give us a Christian view 
of life so much above the times of the Apostle as to 
avouch its Divine origin ; and we shall alike admire 
its sublimity, and be soothed with its consolations. 

" Foreknowledge." With God there cannot be 
any foreknowledge which comes from forecalculating 
future events ; for God, unlike us, sees events wrapped 
up in their causes. If an acorn could be transparent, 
and you should hold it up to the solar microscope, 
you would see in . the germ of it the future oak out- 
lined distinctly in all its branches. And in a hand- 
ful of acorns you would see perspectively the lofty 
and wide-spreading forest. So, doubtless, God sees 
all that is to be ; the whole future in the present ; 
things to be are as things that are ; all that we are — 
beneath the deepest scope of our self-consciousness, 
is open to Him, and therefore He knows all that is to 
come of it. For our natural life, down to the smallest 
events and happenings, is but the flower and foliage 
of our spiritual life, even to the branches and the 
stems and the fluttering leaves. 

" Predestinate." More rigidly rendered, limited 



262 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

beforehand. And the meaning is, most clearly, the 
Lord prearranged our life-plan, so that all events 
should be fitted into it, and every thread and fibre in 
a man's surroundings be so woven and adjusted as 
best to secure the end. This is the preordering, 
exactly suited to the most propitious unfolding of 
one's spiritual being. 

" Calling." This is more than arranging events 
for us and adjusting circumstances. It is God speak- 
ing to the inward mind, now open to the tidings of 
higher things. It is the Divine law lying audibly 
upon the conscience. It is that stage of the human 
experience sure to come with every man when there 
is the call and the answer between God and his child. 
On one side, " Hearken to my voice ! " On the other, 
" Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? " The sol- 
emn period this, when you wake up to the necessity 
of moral choosing by that voice within the soul 
which comes louder than the sound of many waters 
over the clamor of our self-interests and passions. 

" Justified." Better rendered, made righteous ; 
for that comes when the calling is obeyed ; not an 
imputed and make-believe righteousness, but being 
made an obedient subject of the law of Right, laid 
with supreme authority upon the conscience, making 
you yielding and pliant under it as a little child. 

" Glorified." This, in Scripture-phrase, has a 
meaning exceedingly definite. It is not translation 
into some heaven of material splendor. What it 



THE DIVINE LIFE-PLAN. 263 

means we know very well from what is called " the 
glorification " of our Saviour. That was when the in- 
most Divine Life came out in all its fullness, in place 
of the lower and earthly life which it displaced for- 
ever ; and then He was transfigured to his disciples, 
or to John, in vision clothed in heavenly majesty. 
So of his followers. To be glorified is to have our 
highest, most heavenly frames, pass over into the out- 
ward life and practice, till they become the Chris- 
tian's daily habit, his spontaneous adornment, and 
grace. " Be ye transformed," says the Apostle, " by 
the renewing of your mind." It is the outward man 
transfigured by the inward, taking the colorings of 
the spirit within, and the clothings of its light and 
beauty. It is when our moralities are not mere du- 
ties and tasks laid upon us, but the outgoings of the 
heart and reflections of its love-light alone. Before 
we reach this we do good and talk good outwardly 
and by compulsion of law. Now the Christian changes 
into the image and likeness of his Saviour, even as the 
shining ones. Before this, in the figure of old Cud- 
worth, we are like dead instruments of music, to be 
played upon by the musician's hand. After this, it is 
as if " the spirit of music embodied itself in the in- 
strument and lived in the strings, and made them of 
their own accord dance up and down and warble out 
their harmonies." And observe how being glorified 
follows after being justified ; how the all-beautiful 
law is first laid upon us outwardly to be obeyed as a 



264 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

command, but afterwards enters inwardly as our 
life and love. In the words of Job, "I put on right- 
eousness and it clothed me, and justice was my robe 
and diadem." 

These, then, are steps on the stairs to heaven. 
Such is the Divine plan that involves us. And you 
see how one stage follows on the one before, and 
grows out of it ; how the Divine knowledge that sees 
all our future in what we are, weaves about us the 
life-plan adapted to its end ; how that brings us to 
the place where his voice becomes audible, and He 
calls ; how obedience to the call brings us obsequious 
under the all-plastic law ; how this, from an outward 
rule, becomes an inward and renewing life, till our 
daily moralities reflect its light, and are glorified in 
it. Such is the perfect plan into which God seeks 
to put each one of us ; into which He does draw 
every soul pliant enough for the mouldings of his 
Providence. And I think you will agree with me 
that the consciousness of being involved in such a 
plan as this gives an indescribable dignity to human 
life, and makes its meanest adjuncts, down even to 
the dust and the straw we tread on, to glitter with a 
light which is not their own ; that the house which 
is the humblest and whose furniture is the meanest, 
if only its work come into this plan and arrangement, 
borrows a lustre from above, and must seem to 
God's angels who look down upon it as when the 
sunlight blazes from cottage windows. There is no 



THE DIVINE LIFE-PLAN. 265 

waste page, no stray leaf from your book of life. 
You must see, if involved in such a plan, how it lights 
up all your cares, hallows all your griefs, dignifies 
your most servile labors ; for it takes them all up 
and unifies them in a system that works for immor- 
tal ends. As quaint old Herbert says, — 

" Who sweeps a room, if this the end, 
Makes that and the action fine." 

When Columbus was on his first voyage of dis- 
covery and was approaching the shores of the New 
World, he was steering straight towards the Florida 
coast ; but at that time a flock of sea-birds flew across 
the track of his vessel. " Methinks," said one of his 
men, " that here is a sign from heaven. Something 
tells me we ought to follow the track of these birds." 
Columbus partook of the same superstition and 
turned his keel. In so doing he turned in some sort 
the destiny of two continents. He turned the whole 
course of modern history. And if in shaping the 
future of a continent down the long centuries in its 
customs, laws, and language, there is a Providence 
that guides the sea-birds in their flight, will you not 
believe that in our personal history, as He leads us 
and ripens us for heaven, not a sparrow falls on the 
ground without your Father ? 

We come, then, to a truth of exceeding interest. 
Men are ready enough to acknowledge in the gross 
that God has some system of the universe and takes 



266 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

care of it. Why will you not see the particulars 
which this general truth involves ? If this be so, 
why will you not see that He has a special plan for 
each one of you and tries to keep you in it ? Every 
man by his original make and capacity is unlike every 
other man, and needs therefore a training and de- 
velopment of his own ; needs some adjustment of 
circumstances unlike every other man ; so that the 
good which is to be wrought out from his condition, 
and the character to be formed from it, shall have orig- 
inal shapings and colorings. To be saved in the full 
meaning of that word is not merely to get to heaven, 
but to have wrought out the special end and to have 
formed in you the individual excellence which God 
made you for. He has not only his plan of the uni- 
verse, but his plan of each man's life, and from be- 
hind the veilings of his Providence is leading him in 
ways that he does not know ; giving him tempta- 
tions, trials, crosses, joys, and sorrows, which are all 
his own. The thought may startle us at first, but 
the inference is inevitable from our subject, that He 
not only marked out the pathway of the worlds, but 
that your path and mine were sketched in the Book 
of God before we entered them. 

II. But we are not like the things of nature held 
passively in the Divine plan. We can take ourselves 
out of it if we will. That is to say, we can renounce 
the Providence that leads us, and place ourselves in 
that which is only sequacious and preventive. One, 



THE DIVINE IIFE-PLAN. 267 

as I said leads us and urges us. The other follows 
us. One draws, incloses, organizes our whole life, 
physical, spiritual, and eternal, into its own supreme 
order. But we can renounce all this. We can break 
away from God's order and try to make one of our 
own. We can renounce his plan and follow our own 
self-will. Shall not his Providence still fold us in ? 
Yes, but it is no longer the Providence that goes be- 
fore and draws us ; it is that which goes behind and 
looks after us. The first entices us with all heavenly 
attractions. The other follows on after evil, tempers 
it, balances it, subordinates it, and keeps it from a 
lower abyss. The field of the one slopes upward 
into the heavens ; the field of the other slopes down- 
ward into the deeps. In the one, man is an end in 
himself, and the Divine purpose is wrought out with- 
in him. In the other, this end has so far failed, and 
man — as in the case of Pharaoh — is degraded into 
a means and instrument of something else. In the 
one, the Divine Providence confers the greatest pos- 
sible good ; in the other, it prevents the greatest 
possible ill. The directing Providence draws him 
who tries to climb upward, engirds him with invisible 
helps, makes his foot firm on every stair where he 
plants it, till he stands on the serene summits at last. 
The preventive Providence still places an arm under 
every man that falls ; breaks his fall, and lets him 
down the abyss with the least of wounding and lac- 
eration, for there is no malignity in the punishments 



268 SERMONS AND SONGS 

of God. So the Psalmist, " If I ascend into heaven, 
thou art there. If I descend and make my bed in 
hell, behold thou art there." 

I hope the distinction is plain, but I illustrate. 
Some years ago a vessel went to the South Sea Isl- 
ands with a Methodist missionary who felt impelled 
by a Divine urgency. He carried the good news of 
Christ to a people who lived by murder and ate 
human flesh. By incredible perseverance and sacri- 
fice, he gained many of them, and they were changed 
into Christian men and women. There was another 
vessel that sailed to the Guinea coast where the crew 
landed to burn negro villages and capture slaves, and 
they opened the slave-trade which has been kept 
open till now. I suppose you will agree that the Di- 
vine Providence did draw the good James Calvert 
into his work and worked with him, and was a guard 
of fire about him in his perils and sufferings till the 
curses of cruel men were changed to sweet and tender 
songs. And you will agree, I think, that the Divine 
Providence did not urge John Hawkins to his work 
of man-stealing, yet followed him in the bloody track 
and blackened wastes which he left, to bring all pos- 
sible good oat of ill ; to temper evil ; to subordinate 
crime ; and to make the tophet of slavery work at 
last in the redemption of a race. 

Such is the twofold Providence. On one side the 
view opens upward to the foot of the throne ; on the 
other downward out of sight. Its golden links in- 



THE DIVINE LIFE- PLAN. 269 

volve us if we will yield to them, and then they are 
sure to draw us upward to the blest abodes. 

If my subject has come home to you, it has 
prompted a very practical inquiry. Where in this 
twofold Providence am I included and involved ; in 
the one which directs and draws me on, or that which 
only follows and mitigates ? that which pulls us up the 
heavenly stairs, or that which only lets us down the 
easiest way through the lapses of sin ? These ques- 
tions can be easily answered, and let me go on now 
and seek the tests by which we can answer them 
candidly and fairly to ourselves. 

1. If we are indeed in the foldings of the Provi- 
dence that directs and urges, we shall be very likely 
to invoke it, study its signs and manifestations, and 
be on the watch for its leadings. I do not mean 
that it will break into our life-plan openly, for then 
it would overwhelm us with its splendors. But no 
man who looks up daily with the prayer, " Lord, what 
wilt thou have me to do ? " is left very long without 
an answer. How very different it is with godless 
and worldly men ; how they keep plunging on and 
on, with no other guidance than their own self-will ; 
and hence so much of the hurry and fever and 
scramble in the race of life. Hence the alternate 
elations of success, or depressions of disappointment, 
or anxieties and bodings of disaster, by those who 
never allow those pauses in theif affairs, when in the 



270 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

hush of the hour the Divine voice could be heard, and 
the Divine tokens could be clearly seen. It is said 
that, as a people, none are subject to so many acci- 
dents and surprises as we. If it be so, it is because 
we have less of this hush and listening for the Di- 
vine leadings, but have blotted out the word Provi- 
dence and written " luck " in the place of it, and so 
the door is left wide open for all the devils of con- 
fusion to come in. It is a most instructive fact, that 
the men around whom events seem to marshal 
themselves and conspire together to one end, are 
men who have been in the habit of looking for and 
following a Divine lead, till finally it comes to them 
almost consciously, transfused through their very 
intuitions, and the Divine calm comes down upon 
them and lies about them, where the confusion and 
the surprises cannot enter. Indeed, the more we 
seek these Divine leadings, the more they will draw 
us up into the Divine counsels, so that under the 
shadow of that Rock which is higher than we, we 
can watch the motions of the tides and the dashing 
of the waves, and feel secure with our finite reason, 
folded in the Omniscience of God. 

2. Again, if we are involved in that Providence 
which leads and directs, it will shape all our concep- 
tions of the discipline of life. For I suppose all per- 
sons come to look upon this world either as mere 
pleasure-ground, or as a school where immortal be- 
ings are educated for the skies. How differently 



THE DIVINE LIFE-PLAN. 2JI 

from these two stand-points will they interpret all 
the events of their probation ! From the one the 
question always is, How do they affect my enjoy- 
ments ? From the other the question always will 
be, How are they affecting my manhood or woman- 
hood, and my attainments for immortality ? How 
different seem our crosses, trials, and failures, from 
these opposite points of view ! From one they are 
so much dead loss, so much abstracted from our 
pleasures. From the other they fit in and harmo- 
nize in the frame of our history, and make a single 
mosaic where we love to trace the finger of our God. 
Regard life as a school and you soon come to ask 
the meaning of all its environments even where they 
touch you most painfully. " How did I need this, 
and what is the message which it brings to me ? 
How does it fit to my inner life, and what is the 
good I am to extract from it ? " Even the great 
sorrows that come over us like a cloud, will not be 
black with the wrath of God, but they will rather 
come with those soft droppings of the rain, under 
which we are sure the tender blade will shoot forth, 
and the greenness of another spring. 

3. There is another test, and a very definite one. 
What the Apostle terms the Divine call, comes to 
every man somewhere in the unfolding plan of his 
life. Yea, God prearranges and preorders our life- 
plan, so that this call shall somewhere be very dis- 
tinct and audible. It is true, no man ever gets quite 



272 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

out of the hearing of it, though the Divine voice is 
muffled and obscured in the whirl of our interests 
and passions. But how, clear as matin-bells, it 
sounds through the young conscience as yet un- 
spotted from the world ! How sharp and pungent 
are its urgencies where the young man or young 
woman stands at the parting of the ways ! free to 
choose the whole business and work of this earthly 
probation ; free to make this world a mere field of 
pleasure or a field of discipline, where all the facul- 
ties are trained for humane or divine employments. 
Here it is that vows of obedience and self-consecra- 
tion, distinctly taken and recorded in the Book of 
life, put you in the Divine plan ; so sure to draw you 
up the heavenly stairs, that the old theologies name 
it by such words as " effectual calling," " irresistible 
grace," and "Divine decrees." Indeed, they very 
well might ; for think what ministries watch over 
you and wait round you when once such a vow has 
been decisively made and recorded on high. Then 
the Providence that leads and draws is ever with 
you, for all the happenings of your probation are so 
toned and organized as to help you on. For as the 
Apostle puts it, the invisible heavens then close 
round you to get the victory for you, and in his list 
of co-workers he places life, death, angels, princi- 
palities, height, depth, things present, and things to 
come. All these become yours. And how great 
is the sin and the shame if, when such ministries 



THE DIVINE LIFE-PLAN. 273 

watch round us and wait to enfold us, we break out 
from their charmed circle to where no Providence 
can lead us, but only follow after us ; not to give us 
his best, but only keep us from our worst in the 
gulfs of ruin. 

These tests are very simple ones. I think they 
are very decisive, and I have tried to make this dis- 
tinction in the twofold Providence of God sharp 
and clear, because we are so apt to slide into the 
world's cant which is only a pernicious fatalism mak- 
ing " all things for the best." They are for the best 
when we put ourselves within the grapplings of the 
golden links by which He draws us. They are the 
best when we have given up our plan for his. Then 
how blessed it is to live ! for that majestic repose 
called the " peace of God " will be ours. Our con- 
sciousness will grow brighter and more profound, 
that we are living in God's life-plan, not ours, and 
that we are drawn into the central calm of the 
world's confusions where we hear tidings of invisi- 
ble things, — 

" Of ebb and flow and ever-during power, 
And central peace subsisting at the heart 
Of endless agitation." 
18 



ABOVE THE STORMS. 

Above the storms and thunder-jars 
That shake the eddying air, 

Away beneath the naked stars, 
Rises the Mount of Prayer. 

The cumbering bars of mortal life 

Here break and fall away, 
And the harsh noise of human strife 

Comes never : Let us pray ! 

Father, may thy serener light 

Reveal my nature true, 
And all its pages, dark and bright, 

Lie open to my view. 

I 've mingled in the battle-din, 
That shakes the plains below, 

And passions born of earth and sin 
Have left their stains, I know. 

How silent move thy chariot wheels 
Along our camping ground, 

Whose thickly folding smoke conceals 
Thy camp of fire around ! 

We tremble in the battle's roar, 

Are brave amid its calm ; 
And when the fearful fight is o'er 

We snatch thy victor-palm. 



276 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

On surface knowledge we have fed, 
And missed the golden grain ; 

And now I come to Thee for bread 
To sate this hunger-pain. 



No gift I bring, nor knowledge fine, 
Nor trophies of my own ; 

I come to lay my heart in thine, 
O Lamb amid the throne ! 

All that the Father hath is thine, — 
Thus does thy word declare, — 

So the full stream of life divine 
Flows from the Godhead there. 



Stands in eternal green ; 
Out from the throne the River flows 
In crystal waves between. 

Ambrosial fruits hang o'er the waves 
That pour their cleansing flood ; 

Thy Fount of Love the heart that laves, 
And fills with royal good. 

That good I seek, yet not alone 

The hungered heart to fill, 
But as the angel nigh the throne 

Made swift to do thy will ; 

Thy will, unmingled, Lord, with mine, 
That makes all service sweet, 

And charged with messages divine, 
Puts wings upon my feet. 



ABOVE THE STORM. 277 

No need to trim my taper's blaze, 

No need of sun or moon ! 
The glories falling from thy face 

Make my unchanging noon. 



XVII. 

HOME. 

Luke xv. 20. And he arose and came to his Father. But 
when he was a great way off, his Father saw him, and ran 
and fell on his neck and kissed him. 

r I ^HIS portion of Scripture is generally called 
■*■ the parable of the Prodigal Son. I very much 
doubt, however, whether we are to take it as ficti- 
tious narrative. We find in the Gospels two kinds 
of parables. One kind is drawn from the processes 
of nature, such as Matthew and Mark report — 
the lilies of the field, the leaven, the wheat and 
the tares. Another kind is drawn from transcripts 
of human life, such as the good Samaritan, and 
the prodigal son, and these might have been both 
history and parable. They may have been such 
narratives of fact as had come to our Saviour's 
knowledge ; and this may have given a directness 
and pungency to his teachings and their applica- 
tion. There seems little doubt that the story of 
the good Samaritan was a narrative of this kind, 
and we see at once how straightway it went to the 
conscience of the priests of the temple who came 
to listen and cavil. The story of the two sons 



28o SERMONS AND SONGS. 

reads much like history, — one of them very correct 
and moral, but proud, selfish, and cold-hearted ; 
the other profligate and generous to a fault, but 
more quickly convinced of his fault and more easily 
brought into affectionate and child-like obedience. 
The Jewish and the Gentile believer are here 
strongly typified, and the story is put home to the 
Jewish conscience encased in its bigotry and pride. 

In the times of our Saviour there was one for- 
eign city where a young Jew would resort to perfect 
his accomplishments by foreign travel and knowl- 
edge of the world. It was Rome, drunk with her 
abominations, gone down in sensuality, and glaring 
in false splendor. If our young hero went by way 
of Greece he probably would have spent his living 
there already without seeing Rome. There was 
enough at Corinth of lust and profligacy to absorb 
his substance. There were swine-herds in the 
country to give him employment ; and it was re- 
garded as the lowest business a man could engage 
in. Starved, and beggared, and in rags, he finds his 
way back to Judea — his pride all broken down, 
and doubtful as to how he will be received. Some- 
thing like this is the family history, a chapter of 
which our Saviour has extracted to turn it into 
parable and hang on it the Divine truths of his re- 
ligion. They are all there, — every one of the es- 
sential truths of Christianity has here its image and 
setting, and in language ever dear to human affec- 



HOME. 28l 

tions. Without trying to exhaust the meaning of 
the parable, or draw out all the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity which cluster about the narrative, we will at- 
tend to one practical lesson which appeals to us with 
special urgency. It is the power and influence of 
Home in the moulding of the character, and even 
the regeneration of the whole spiritual nature. Its 
direct influence we are ready enough to acknowl- 
edge ; its indirect, unconscious, all-abiding influ- 
ence, we are somewhat slower in perceiving. Our 
young Jewish traveller has forgotten home for 
a while amid the revelry, we will suppose, of some 
Grecian city. At Corinth, lust was even enthroned 
and worshipped, and temples were built and dedi- 
cated to sensual pleasure, and in the midst of these 
debaucheries all the purer and sweeter memories 
of his childhood are drowned and lost. But his 
substance gone, and naked and starving among the 
swine-herds, there is one spot that looms up like 
a brilliant star away over the sea and over the 
hills, and calls him to a better life. It was not 
some exhortation to virtue from a Greek moralist 
that brought him to repentance ; it was not the 
memory of some sermon he had heard in the syna- 
gogue ; it was the awakening of home memories, 
and they came so persuasively that he takes the re- 
solve at once, " I will arise and go to my Father." 
And what was the magic of these home memories ? 
There are a great many kinds of homes, but 



282 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

for the most part they may be ranged in four 
classes. There are places where people simply in- 
habit under the same roof for the purpose of eating 
and drinking and sleeping. They have no other 
end but to procure for themselves, in the most con- 
venient way, food and raiment and lodging, and 
that done, the end is secured. Getting a living only 
means getting enough to eat, drink, wear, and in- 
habit, and for this purpose there must be some 
place to lodge nights and keep comfortable. That 
is one kind of home. There is another kind. There 
are homes which are places of instruction and dis- 
cipline ; where getting a living is a means to this 
discipline ; where example and precept are both 
used for the training of children in the way they 
should go ; places of education for the coming re- 
sponsibilities and business of the world. It may 
include religious instruction, discipline, and example. 
Then home becomes a primary school where suc- 
cessive generations are prepared for the duties of 
life. That is another kind of home. Again, there 
are homes where the affections of the heart are 
lavished, where each lives in all the rest, and all live 
in each ; where each finds his own nature com- 
plemented and supplied in its lackings and short- 
comings, and where the relations of husband and 
wife, and parent and child, and brother and sister, 
are lines of communication for mutual help, and 
for the sunshine of the heart to flash over them. 



HOME. 283 

So there are places to lodge in, places of dis- 
cipline, places for mutual love ; and there is almost 
always a kind of unity which belongs to every one 
of those little societies which we call families. 
The members get moulded, consciously or not, by 
the general spirit which pervades a household and * 
keeps it together. If it be only to supply the ani- 
mal wants, if that is the main thing which gives 
unity to the house, it will be very hard for any 
member of it to escape the coarseness and the 
touch of animality affecting the taste, the style of 
thought, and the style of character. The children 
will breathe it in, and they cannot help it. People 
may seek to cover over this coarseness with paint 
and finery, and pictures and culture ; but behind 
them all there will be the moral squalor that can- 
not be concealed, and there will be a taint of earth- 
liness in the whole atmosphere of the house, which 
no ventilation from open doors and windows can 
ever drive out. Or again, if instruction and disci- 
pline and example are supplied, and these are all, 
and give their tone and spirit to the household, the 
atmosphere of the house will be cold and chilling, 
and lack sunshine. Even a good example, when 
cut to order, has no magnetism in it. A school is 
a very good place in its way, but a school is not 
home and is not society. 

Or again, if family affections and mutual helps are 
all that give unity to the house, the family becomes 



284 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

a smaller clan for building each other up, living 
in each other, but living in nobody else ; and so 
the atmosphere of the house may be heart-warm, 
but it is the warmth of self-love reflected back and 
intensified. Indeed, I do not think there is any 
form of human selfishness that grows into shapes 
so stupendous, and at the same time so deceptive 
and imposing, as that which is nourished by these 
family affections left merely in their natural state, 
and with no higher inspiration to give them soul, 
expansion, and guidance. Even the forms of charity 
and religion may be only the outside decorations 
of family show, and the sweet offices of domestic 
love may be only the natural instinct of the heart, 
blind to everything that transcends the narrow 
sphere of family interest and pride. 

So, then, there is still another kind of home — one 
which takes up what is good in these three and 
supplies something more. Put all these three to- 
gether, — a place to lodge in, a place of discipline, 
and a place of family affections, and something else. 
Make it a seminary for immortal beings to be 
trained and prepared for an endless existence ; not 
only to do business in this world and do it well, 
but for the highest duties and employments of 
any world, whether on this side of the River, or 
on the other side, for it makes no difference. A 
good life here is the same as a good life anywhere ; 
for to do our work on earth and do it well, is to 



HOME. 285 

bring into full employ the powers of ■ mind and heart 
which are put into the employments of heaven it- 
self. Suppose this conception of home to rule it 
and give it unity, the* mind and character of all in 
it will be formed in yet higher mouldings. Then 
there is another Being who will dwell there. Then 
even the drudgeries of life lose all their coarseness, 
because their end and purpose are to get the foot- 
hold and foundation for the education of immortal 
minds. Christ will be in it and fill out all its busi- 
ness with his own Spirit of grace and love. Ex- 
ample will not be a pattern of conduct cut to order 
and exhibited before children for them to look at. 
Example will be the spontaneous outbreathings of 
the Spirit of Christ, always the same, whether the 
children are in hearing or not — even as the rose 
always gives out its fragrance and beauty, though 
nobody is passing by. Discipline will lose all its 
hardness, though none of its firmness, for it will be 
the loving tractations of a hand guided by gentle- 
ness, of a spirit which has the Divine patience 
breathed into it. The family will not only be a 
school, but a society where minds and hearts open 
into each other, in order that each may find what 
is wanting in himself, and in order that the faults 
of each may find their rebuking and repression in 
the atmosphere of truth and affection that per- 
vades the house and fills it. 

And family affection loses all its clanship when 



286 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

the Christ is in it, because the love of kindred en- 
larges to a love of kind ; yea, the more you love your 
own household, the more just and loving and for- 
bearing will you be towards other households ; for 
you will see more keenly and know more perfectly 
all the tender and sore places where the world chafes 
against the sensibilities of other people, and how its 
wrongs affect them in their dearest and tenderest 
relations. The great reformers and philanthropists 
have generally been those whose philanthropy has 
been kindled at home, who have enlarged the ties of 
kindred into those of kind, and learned in the broth- 
erhood of the family the brotherhood of the race, 
and how grievous are the sins and woes by which 
its ties are cankered or wounded. Every new birth 
in the household now becomes sacred, for every 
babe that enters it is the fresh bud of immortal be- 
ing, and baptism assumes all its beauty and signifi- 
cance. Indeed, the baptismal rite is as full of mean- 
ing as the funeral rite, for it takes the little being 
out of the category of mere animal existence, and 
receives him from the Great Giver as an heir of im- 
mortality. When friends go out of the world, we 
dismiss them with rites recognizing their spiritual 
nature, putting in our hopes of their hereafter. 
How fitting, quite as much, that the new-comers into 
this world should be welcomed with rites which 
symbolize their spiritual being, — buds to be opened 
into immortal flower. Maternal love becomes some- 



HOME. 287 

thing more than blind instinctive affection, for it is 
enlightened, guided, and inspired by another love, 
pure as an angel's, and giving to it an angel's uncon- 
querable strength. Prayer and family devotion be- 
come more than a set form and prescribed duty ; for 
a family so unified, and organized for such an end, 
becomes a society on earth, brought into alliance and. 
correspondency with the blest societies above ; its 
life is their life, their spirit is one and their worship 
is one, and family prayer is the open door through 
which the invisible messengers come and go, and the 
Holy Spirit descends. The world itself has recog- 
nized the fact that about some families there is an 
invisible guard which their philosophy has not been 
able to account for. The home so organized, and 
for such an end, subordinating all its employments 
thereto, has a unity of its own. It will have its sor- 
rows, its trials, its bereavements, its chafings and 
corrosions, but the one spirit and end hallow them 
all, and turn them to some account in the Divine 
economy ; and amid all the darkness of this world 
there will be a light in the house and all around it, 
as when cottage windows are ablaze to the distant 
traveller and cheer him on his way. 

The influence of a home like this cannot be meas- 
ured by any visible and palpable results. Its influ- 
ences are not merely restraining, but regenerating ; 
for they store up a host of memories and associa- 
tions which, though buried for years under world li- 



288 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

ness and depravity, will wake up afterwards, and 
sometimes fill the whole soul as with the chime of 
angel-voices. They are the very things stored up 
and kept secure, which the Holy Spirit afterwards 
takes hold of and uses for the conversion and re- 
generation of the soul. I doubt whether any soul 
is ever lost whose advent into this world is through 
a good home. It is seldom that there is any falling 
away from it ; but even if there is, the coming back 
will be through the language which time may have 
obscured and covered over, but whose letters blaze 
out anew when, by trial, by sorrow, or by repentance, 
the obscuring veil has been withdrawn. 

There was another son which history tells us of, 
who did not go to Corinth, but away down into Egypt, 
to be surrounded also with seductions to sin, and 
with the trials of evil fortune. But he resisted the 
temptations, and turned the trials into moral victo- 
ries so brilliant that they shine down through all the 
ages. And whence came the strength that girded 
him and held him up ? Why, there was a home 
away up in Judea, where not only the love of parents, 
but the love and fear of the Lord, had been stored up 
and kept in the most tender places of the heart ; and 
this was what the Lord Himself laid hold of, not 
only to save the boy, but to save a whole nation 
from extinguishment. 

The family is a Divine Institution, and there is no 
substitute for it. It is older than any other insti- 



HOME. 289 

tution. Every one of you, by Divine appointment, 
is a member of it. It is older than the State, older 
than the Church, older than Universities, and the 
parental line is more sacred than that of any Apos- 
tolic Succession, and goes up higher and away be- 
yond it. The Christian duties which pertain to it 
you, cannot delegate to anybody else, and by no in- 
genuity can you find anything that will supply their 
place. You cannot send the children to Christ, but 
you may lead them along and draw them after you. 
The home lies back of the Sunday School, and its 
teachings run through six days and all the twenty- 
four hours, and the tide of interest in the school 
rises and sinks with the life in the homes that in- 
spire it and throb through it. You may give the 
children books to read ; your own book of life they 
are reading all the while, perhaps more thoroughly 
than you are aware of, for their clear innocent gaze 
will take in the very lines and chapters which you 
may think are most obscure. The unconscious in- 
fluences of home, those which come from little 
things, little speeches, little deeds, and little offices, 
"that best portion of a good man's life, his little 
nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of 
love," are more subtile and pervading and plastic 
over the character, than the teachings which we set 
ourselves formally to make. For it is not merely 
from what we say or what we do, but how we say it 
and how we do it, and in what spirit and temper, 
19 



290 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

that the life of our life comes, out and shows its 
quality. You may shape the young lips to prayer, 
but the young eyes will see whether your life is a 
prayer and an aspiration towards heavenly things. 
You may give them hymns to learn, but it will come 
to nothing if the music is drowned in the discords 
of earthly passions and the din of this world. We 
may teach them here the Saviours " Come unto 
me ; " we work against mighty odds if they see you 
either going the other way or halting and standing 
still. And there comes a time, a very solemn time, 
when the home breaks up and forms anew ; not only 
the cradles are brought in, but the coffins are car- 
ried out, and there is to be sorrow and mourning, 
and heaven is to be seen through tears. And you 
are to live in this world long after you have left it, — 
live in the memories you leave behind you, memo- 
ries which may be a long and sweet persuasive to 
things which are pure and lovely and of good, re- 
port ; yea, the very chairs where you sat, and the 
pictures on the walls, and the old blessed Bible that 
lies on the stand, shall speak long afterward and call 
others to Christ in more tender accents, if only now 
you will fill the house where you live with the fra- 
grancy of a Christian life. But for this Christ must 
come into the house now to be learned there and 
taught there, and lived there, and He must shape 
the very end and purpose for which all its business 
goes on and all its burdens are borne, even to make 
the home on earth a seminary for the skies. 



HOME. 291 

The subject has a broad and forcible bearing upon 
every one ; for who is there that has not wandered 
away from the house of the heavenly Father, and 
wasted the substance He has given ; these powers 
of mind and heart, these means and opportunities 
being unused or misused, instead of being conse- 
crated to the ends for which He gave them. And 
are there none of you in that land of want and fam- 
ine who have yet to put forth decisively the power 
of choice, in that high resolve, " I will arise and go 
to my Father ? " And are there no voices that call 
thee back, no remembered tones of a Father's spirit 
that has been grieved away ; no remorse for per- 
verted, or wasted, or slumbering powers ; no fading 
ideals of a purity and innocence that make thee sigh 
for peace with God and rest in his atonement ; no 
images that throng down from the hills of life's 
morning land and make thee long to be a child 
again in thy Father's home ? like the man, who, re- 
posing on the field of strife during the truce of bat- 
tle, went back in his visions to the scene of his 
early innocence, — 

" And knew a sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung." 



" FEED MY LAMBS." 

Ho ! ye that rest beneath the Rock 

On pastures greenly growing, 
Or roam at will, Christ's favored flock, 

By waters gently flowing : 

Hear ye upon the desert air 

A voice of woe come crying ! 
While cold upon the barren moor 

Christ's little lambs are dying. 

" Go feed my lambs ! " — the Shepherd's call 
Comes down from realms of glory. 

" Go feed my lambs ! and bring them all 
From moor and mountain hoary." 

Fast falls the night, the bleak winds blow 

Across the desert dreary ! 
Great Shepherd ! — at thy call we '11 go 

And bring the wanderers weary. 






GLAD WORSHIP. 

O God of Love ! we bless thy word that hallows 
This day of rest to our o'erwearied powers : 

As comes thy calm down on the foaming billows, 
Come to our souls thy sweet Sabbatic hours. 

Here may the aged ones, their griefs forgetting, 
Breathe in the quiet which thy temple fills ; 

And may their sun when near its tranquil setting, 
Clothe in its farewell smile the western hills ! 

May childhood learn the words by Jesus spoken, 
And give to Him the fresh and morning hours 

Ere sin the earliest charm of life has broken, 
And while the dews lie sparkling on the flowers. 

And here may all — strong man and blooming maiden, 
When with the load of care or sin opprest, 

Hear Jesus' voice, " O come ye heavy laden, 
Come unto me and I will give you rest." 

And passing on through Earth's brief joys and trials, 
May these thy people join the immortal throng 

Who sweeter incense waft from golden vials, 
And worship thee in their unending song ! 



I WANT NO FLOWERS. 

I want no flowers thy stone to wreathe, 

Nor on thy grave to blow, 
And mind me of my withered rose 

That turns to dust below. 

I need no picture on my walls, 

Thine image to renew, 
And mock thy dear angelic smile, 

And eyes of tender dew. 

I want no spectre-form to come 

In glimpses of the moon, 
Nor message breathed from lips of air 

That melt and vanish soon. 

If these be all that Mercy leaves 
To soothe our great despair, 

I '11 only clasp thee in my dreams, 
And carve thine image there. 

But O these shadows that we grasp 

Tell with prophetic powers, 
That this dim world must be our dream, 

And death our waking hour. 



VESPER HYMN. 

BY ELIZA SCUDDER. 

The day is done, the weary day of thought and toil is past, 
Soft falls the twilight cool and gray on the tired earth at last ; 
By wisest teachers wearied, by gentlest friends oppressed, 
In thee alone, the soul outworn, refreshment finds and rest. 

Bend, Gracious Spirit, from above like these o'erarching skies, 
And to thy firmament of Love lift up these longing eyes ; 
And folded by thy sheltering Hand in refuge still and deep, 
Let blessed thoughts from thee descend as drop the dews of 

sleep. 

t 
And when refreshed the soul once more puts on new life and 

power, 

let thine image, Lord, alone gild the first waking hour ! 
Let that dear Presence dawn and glow fairer than Morn's first 

ray, 
And thy pure radiance overflow the splendor of the day. 

So in the hastening even, so in the coming morn, 

When deeper slumber shall be given and fresher life be born, 

Shine out true Light ! to guide my way amid that deepening 

gloom, 
And rise, O Morning Star, the first that day-spring to illume ! 

1 cannot dread the darkness where thou wilt watch o'er me, 
Nor smile to greet the sunrise unless thy smile I see ; 
Creator, Saviour, Comforter ! on thee my soul is cast ; 

At morn, at night, in earth, in heaven, be thou -my First and 
Last. 

October, 1874. 



XVIII. 

HEAVENLY TREASURES. 

Ezekiel viii. 12. Every man in the chambers of his imagery, 
Matthew vi. 20. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. 

JESUS makes a sharp contrast between treas- 
ures on earth and treasures in heaven — those 
subject to corruption, and rust, and plunder — these 
safe in the Divine keeping, where thieves do not 
break through and steal. This, however, is what is 
called a Hebrew comparison. In the Hebrew idiom 
one thing is declared better than another by being 
put in opposition to it ; and the meaning is, Be 
not so careful of earthly treasures, which are transi- 
tory, as of heavenly treasures, which are permanent 
and unfading. 

The text, then, does not by any means give sanc- 
tion to the asceticism which some have grafted 
upon Christianity, nor to that sour contempt of this 
world, or scorn of its wealth and beauty, which are 
sometimes thought to indicate spirituality of mind. 
Unquestionably the more of heaven we have within 
us, the more we shall see it in all things without us ; 



298 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

so that high spiritual frames will not shut us out 
from this world, but give it to us in more complete 
possession, albeit transfigured as the image of the 
eternal wisdom and love. 

At the same time it cannot be denied that the 
best ministries of this world to us consist mainly 
in this — that they prepare us to do without them. 
The most heavenly state of mind is that which en- 
joys this world the most, and at the same time does 
not depend upon it for its pleasures. And you 
could not apply a better test to yourself to deter- 
mine whether you are carnally or spiritually minded 
than this ; whether you grow more dependent on 
outward props and pleasures, or whether you are 
passing into that untroubled peace which could 
never be broken up, though the props should fall 
away, and moth and rust should canker all earthly 
things. 

And this brings me to the core of my subject — 
the solid treasures which the Divine preacher here 
recommends — " Treasures in heaven." I think this 
phraseology conveys to many minds no very distinct 
ideas. They conceive of heavenly treasures as of 
something undefined, transcendental, and shadowy, 
not the substantial and eternal things which the 
Saviour declares them to be. And the reason why 
many persons put off the claims of religion and 
clutch at the things of this world alone, seems to be 
just this inversion of the truth, making material 



HEAVENLY TREASURES. 299 

things the substance and spiritual things the shadow ; 
when, as you observe, Christ does exactly the re- 
verse ; He makes spiritual things the unchanging 
substance and earthly things the changing and fleet- 
ing shade. 

What, then, are these heavenly treasures ? We do 
something towards dissipating the delusions about 
them when we say what they are not. They are 
not the future happiness put in contrast with the 
present. They are not possessions reserved only in 
some dim and uncertain Future beyond the grave. 
What is far off in another world will always look 
shadowy and unreal, and subject to a thousand hap- 
penings. What is present and tangible is sure ; 
hence, the worldly man's maxim, " Let us eat and 
drink, for to-morrow we die." Food and drink are 
real things. As to what will be after death — that 
is contingent, he thinks, and hangs on the links of 
theologic syllogisms. But the contrast is not be- 
tween earthly treasures and heavenly, as if one were 
now and here and the other then and there. Both 
are now and here, one transitory as the summer 
foliage, the other unchanging as the throne of God. 

I. Passing from what is negative to what is posi- 
tive, we say first, there are treasures of the mind. 
There are what the prophet calls " chambers of im- 
agery." Our life has two great divisions. There is 
the period when we acquire and lay up the material 
of thought, and there is the period when we fall back 



300 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

upon it, use it, revolve it, arrange it, and draw it forth 
from the mind as from a store-house of grand and 
beautiful things. " A thing of beauty is a joy for- 
ever," because he whose tastes have been so purified 
and elevated as to enjoy any kind of good has stored 
his mind so far forth with riches that can never fade. 
This world will pass away from you, but it is leav- 
ing imprints which cannot pass away. They whose 
minds have acquired nothing are poor and wretched 
in their own emptiness when compelled to be alone, 
or cut off from external things. But a mind well 
stored has abundant resources always in the halls of 
imagery. You remember the case of the Danish 
traveller, Niebuhr, who lived over amid the furniture 
of his inmost mind the things he had seen, and en- 
joyed them more hugely than in the senses them- 
selves, when " the deep intense sky of Asia, with its 
brilliant and twinkling host of stars which he had 
gazed at by night, or its lofty vault of blue by day, was 
reflected in the hours of stillness and darkness on 
his inmost soul." And perhaps more remarkable yet 
was the case of that blind old man whose mind was 
aflame with light just in the degree that his senses 
went out in darkness ; when the bursting treasuries 
of the mind within, the accumulated wealth of years, 
arranged themselves at his creative word, and un- 
rolled in rhythmic order, and sang themselves in 
the "Paradise Lost," and " Regained," which have 
charmed the world ever since, suggesting to us the 



HEAVENLY TREASURES. 30 1 

thought that the songs of heaven itself will have 
richness in them only to those whose souls contrib- 
ute something to the melodies. 

The chambers of imagery ! You will find them 
dark and empty in the hour of need unless betimes 
you put something into them. And I touch here 
upon the cause of that total collapse which comes to 
so many persons during the second, or what may be 
called the reflective period of life. In the first period, 
when the sense is keen and the mind vivacious, mere 
external graces may conceal the poverty within. 
But all these external graces are to wither like the 
flowers of summer. And if beneath them no treas- 
ures have been stored away, nothing remains but 
the dreary vacuity and desolation. Nothing has been 
read which has been reduced to form and order, and 
ranged along as the furniture of the soul ; nothing 
has been thought out as the product of our own God- 
given faculties. Nothing has been seen and enjoyed 
with aught else than the carnal eye ; never with that 
inward eye which the higher culture opens, ranging 
all things of beauty in the chambers of imagery, there 
to be a delight forever. There is nothing of all 
this, and so solitude becomes a burden, reflection a 
weariness, for it feeds on emptiness ; conversation is 
all about persons, never about things and principles 
and plans of beneficence, degenerating always into 
the poorest or the most mischievous of personal gos- 
sip. A mind reduced to this condition gives us the 



302 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

» 

most perfect conception of what the hymn calls " the 
emptiness of things below." Treasures of' the mind 
become in this point of view of vast importance to 
our future happiness, even if there were no delight in 
acquisition. O my younger hearers ! you who are in 
the first period of acquisition, if you knew how much 
is depending upon it, — if you knew that in the sec- 
ond period which is coming on apace, the intellect 
is to emerge poor and bare, with no resources in it- 
self, and no fitness for the higher intercourse, unless 
now you replenish its chambers, — you would take 
every opportunity to furnish them well, and 

" In after years, 
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured 
Into a sober pleasure, then thy mind 
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, 
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place 
For all sweet sounds and harmonies." 

There is the laying up of inward treasures that keeps 
them ever on the increase. He who aims at the 
highest usefulness here will put these treasures into 
his plan of culture. Wisdom evolved from experi- 
ence, knowledge ever enlarging from plans of reading, 
observing, and thinking ; the chambers of imagery 
lengthening out into Florentine galleries with every 
new step of progress, — all these are storing up every 
day in the treasuries of the mind ; and so when youth 
has passed, there is something better to appear than 
decay and wrinkles, — precious fruits, golden clusters 



HEAVENLY TREASURES. 303 

of it, not subject to corruption, but ripe for immor- 
tality. These are conditions for the right building of 
the heavenly mansion which is to contain our choicest 
treasures, and whose foundations should be laid now 
and here. 

II. But again there are spiritual treasures. These 
" chambers of imagery " contain something more than 
intellectual furniture. The fashion of this world will 
pass away. But it will have left on our minds within 
prints and copies of itself. What we have said and 
done and intended, and when and where — all these 
are sketched on the canvas of the soul and rolled up 
and folded away for a day of judgment. Hence, 
Christ says that on that day, for every idle word that 
men shall speak they shall give an account thereof. 
So Paul, as I render him. " We must all be made 
manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ, that 
every man may carry away from his body what he 
appropriated to himself while in the body, whether it 
be good or whether it be evil." It is the unrolling 
of the canvas in these halls of imagery which is to 
show our condemnation or our acquittal in the great 
and inevitable day. We eat and drink, we buy and 
sell, and we think the past has been buried under the 
glare of our feverish present. But in some hour of 
solemn thought, in the stillness of our curtained 
chamber where sickness has confined us, in the hour 
of death, perchance, when the doors are shut towards 
the street, the landscapes of the mind emerge in long 



304 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

array and in vivid light and unroll our past behind 
us from the cradle to the present hour. Sometimes 
this is done with such minuteness and vividness of 
touch as to warrant the belief that nothing is ever 
lost from the canvas. And this gives us very dis- 
tinct gleams of the meaning of St. John concerning 
the dead who die in the Lord. " Their works do fol- 
low them," he says. It is a mighty persuasive to 
well-doing that its ever lengthening Past is to lie on 
the scenery of the soul and be drawn after it ; and it 
is the condemnation of evil doing that its chambers 
of imagery are ever filling with those deformities 
which make up its scenery forever. Good or bad, 
their works follow them, for they open in the mem- 
ory a long gallery behind them. " They shall look on 
Him whom they have pierced," was the condemna- 
tion of the murderers ; and so it is with all injustice 
and wrong. The faces of the sufferers, sad and 
plaintive, follow from behind in a long procession. 
What we call the pleasures of a good conscience, or 
the tortures of a guilty one, would hardly exist to us 
were it not for these chambers of imagery. Some- 
times the pictures in them seem to have faded out, or 
to be overlaid by new and more gaudy colors ; but 
there is an Artist who holds a brush so delicate and 
true as to reproduce them in vivid outline when He 
deems it necessary to bring us into clearer self-knowl- 
edge and self-convictions ; and only the reception of 
his great atonement through our inward renewal and 



HEAVENLY TREASURES. 305 

the dawn of a heavenly life can throw them into the 
obscuring shade where they will glare upon us no 
more. 

III. But beside all these are the treasures of faith ; 
and please distinguish between the objects of faith, 
which only inspire hope and expectation, and those 
which become a present possession, and, therefore, 
the treasures of the soul. There is Christian truth 
which is only a theory and a speculation, and which 
one may hold, along with any kind or any amount of 
practical unrighteousness. There may be the sound- 
est and most perfect believing, which is nothing but a 
floating theory that never touches the ground. There 
are two kinds of Christianity. There is one which 
floats in the air ; which lives in the discussions, and 
sometimes in the disputes and quarrels of Christian 
believers ; theories of salvation which some will tell 
you a man must hold in order that his heaven here- 
after may be secure. There are doctrines about God 
and about Christ, and about the relation which sub- 
sists between them, which may be true and of vast 
importance, but which, nevertheless, may be only doc- 
trines of faith, and not treasures of faith. No truth 
is ours till we have in some sort lived it ; no doctrine 
of the Gospel has become fairly our possession till it 
has entered into our vital experience. " If any man 
love me he will keep my words, and my Father will 
love him, and we will come and make our abode with 
him." You might take all the preceots of Jesus out 
20 



306 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

of their connection and away from his Divine person- 
ality, and adopt them as prudential maxims of con- 
duct. And why will not that be all-sufficient, and 
why may we not just as well leave Christ away be- 
hind us and out of the account altogether, if only we 
take his words and practice them as abstract moral 
principles ? Because you want not only his words, 
but his life that throbs through them ; not only the 
practice, but the spirit thereof ; and this comes from 
obedience and discipleship, for they bring you into 
tender and blissful relations with Him in whom 
dwells the fullness of the Godhead. " If any man 
love me," — He makes an essential condition ; for it 
is the love of Christ that expels all the hatreds and 
angers, and the pride of life which our moral be- 
havior may cover over, but which we carry along 
with us until Christ Himself be formed within ; and 
meeting us in the humble path of obedience and dis- 
cipleship, the Divine Truth and Love, as they are 
in Jesus, come and make their abode with us. By 
obedience in the spirit of personal discipleship the 
doctrines of faith pass from shadowy speculations 
into golden treasures, — treasures in heaven not laid 
up in reserve in some far-off and contingent future, 
but in the heaven whose dawn is in the soul, and out 
of whose experience of love and peace the sons of 
God already are shouting for joy. 

The Christ of consciousness, as He passes over 
from the realm of speculation into the soul and fills 



HEAVENLY TREASURES. 307 

it with Himself, will be to you, I suppose, a mystical 
and shadowy conception, unless there is something 
in your own experience to give it realism and make 
it plain. But we can make this clear by most famil- 
iar analogies. There is a teacher, we will say, who 
never meets his class ; he only sends them lessons 
and rules of behavior, and a list of the command- 
ments which they are expected to obey, and a de- 
scription of penalties for disobedience, or of medals 
and rewards for good conduct. How much do you 
suppose this lean skeleton of the ideal man will in- 
corporate itself with the minds and characters of 
those pupils ? and even if they try to grasp it and 
appropriate it, how much of health and glow will 
this paper humanity be likely to put into them ? 
Do you not see that even the virtues, cultivated in 
that way, will have somewhat in them stiff and hard, 
and lacking spontaneous grace and inspiration ? 
whereas, the good teacher in the midst of his pupils, 
all radiant with personal love, reproduces himself in 
them, clothing this ideal skeleton with flesh and 
blood, and making the virtue he imparts beat with 
the pulses of his own life. A faint illustration, I 
confess, of the creative power in the Divine person- 
alities of Christianity when we give ourselves up to 
their transforming influence ; of the difference be- 
tween the Christianity of floating dogma, or of one 
which has the Christ taken out of it, and the living 
Gospel, which not only gives you Christ formed 



308 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

within, as the hope of glory, but as the heavenly 
treasure already won. 

Treasures of the mind, treasures of the soul, and 
treasures of faith, then, are the riches laid up in 
heaven. They are what we have now and here, if 
at all ; and they are what we shall continue to have 
when these changing fashions of earth and sense, 
and this outward circumstance of clay have passed 
away from us forever. And you are only to imag- 
ine yourself without them to conceive what the fu- 
ture retribution is to be. One might well shrink 
from an application of this subject when we see 
what multitudes are toiling to acquire, or how 
deeply buried they are in the conditions of sense 
and matter. To the outward eye it would almost 
seem that there are whole classes of people who 
wear the human form, whose life is so faintly dis- 
tinguishable from that of the animal, that when the 
body falls away from them, there will be nothing 
left ; that there is not spiritual life enough in them 
to " shoot the gulf of death," and come up on the 
other side. But all progress and discovery, and all 
the explorations of our own mysterious nature, con- 
firm the Christian doctrine of man's inherent immor- 
tality, that it is inborn, not conferred or acquired. I 
believe in its lands and its deathless dwellings just 
as much as I believe in the continents over the sea. 
But the old half Jewish half pagan doctrine of retri- 
bution the Church has nearly done with. No, it is 



HEAVENLY TREASURES. 309 

not the wrath to come that men have to fear. There 
is no Divine anger to be quenched in blood, and no 
rewards for factitious or substituted righteousness. 
There is something surer and nigh at hand that men 
have to fear, whose culture is only sense deep, and 
who depend on this outward show for all that they 
enjoy. For when all this is shut off from them, 
what is there left ? Poverty, destitution, the sandy 
deserts of the mind, the squalor and the want and 
the outer darkness of mind and soul. For we carry 
away with us only what was in the body, and if there 
was nothing in the body but the soul's squalor and 
nakedness, these are all which can emerge on the 
other side. As sure as heaven is not a locale, but a 
subjective condition, so sure shall we fail of it and 
be in the outside darkness, unless we carry it along 
with us over the stream. To the multitudes, then, 
who toil only for ashes or that which will turn to 
ashes, the exhortation would be, not flee from the 
wrath to come, but flee from the desolation and the 
abodes of darkness. 

" Their works do follow them." Our doctrine is 
an ever fresh incitement to the Christian believer 
whose life is a continuous accumulation of heavenly 
treasures. Our chambers of imagery should be 
an ever lengthening gallery reaching continuously 
through time and into eternity and bridging over the 
dreaded gulf that lies between. The essential con- 
ditions of happiness are given us here ; no different 



310 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

ones will be afforded after we have passed over to 
the other side. Always our Past must follow us, 
here and through the endless Future, and our Pres- 
ent will be the resultant of all the forces behind us 
which we have chosen to bring into play. There are 
two ranges of mountains in Palestine, standing over 
against each other, on one of which were pronounced 
the curses of the Law, and on the other the promises 
and benedictions. I should take these to symbolize 
our past history. There is a Mount Ebal and a 
Mount Gerazim in every one's experience, if he has 
truly had a probation and a history. They rise up 
in the past, the one blackened and ragged, and with 
voices of malediction, showing forth all that is pain- 
ful in our biography and all the crosses and frowns 
of the Divine Providence. From the other come 
the promises and blessings. But as we journey on, 
one or the other becomes obscured and finally disap- 
pears from sight. Clouds of oblivion roll over it and 
hide it. Sometimes one disappears, sometimes the 
other. Sometimes it is Ebal, black and portentous, 
that takes up the whole retrospect, flinging its shad- 
ows and maledictions over all the future way. Or 
again it is Gerazim, looming up in splendors mar^ 
bright in the westering sun. Ebal has gone clea* 
out of sight, and the promises and benedictions come 
louder and clearer, and fill our whole space with 
sphere-melodies and prophecies of things to be. We 
may not annihilate our past, but it depends on our 



HEAVENLY TREASURES. 311 

choice which shall stand out bold in the eternal 
sunshine and which shall disappear in the obscuring 
shade. May yours be the mount of benedictions, 
lengthening on forever and forever, over which the 
Saviour's Beatitudes shall come without ceasing, and 
the approving voice of the Infinite Father, " Well 
done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the 
joy of thy Lord." 



CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY. 

Clear was the sky and hushed the gale, 

That Sabbath day in Grasmere vale, 

As if where now her Poet sleeps, 

Nature a holier Sabbath keeps : 

He lies upon her loving breast, 

The hills all watching o'er his rest, 

Beside the shore of Grasmere Lake, 

In whose still depths, the noonbeams make 

Sweet copies of the quiet scene, 

Along her banks of summer green. 

I found the place of " Green-head Ghyll," 
And conned old Michael's tale awhile ; 
And when the day was waning late 
I passed the famous " Wishing Gate," 
Where Rydal Water softly flows, 
Afraid to break its own repose, 
And came where thy tall cliff, Nabscar, 
Flings greetings to the Morning Star ; 
Or Evening round thy hoary head 
Weaves thy soft cowl of sable red. 

Blue ether's arms around us flung, 1 
We climbed thy highest crags among, 
And pictures there before us lay 
Whose charm will never fade away : 

1 " Blue ether's arms flung round thee 
Stilled the pantings of dismay." 

Wordsworth's Ascent of Helvellyn. 



314 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

The brook from Rydal's silent tide 
Went dreaming down to Ambleside, 
And in its summer verdure sweet 
Lay Rydal Mount beneath our feet, 
Its garden-walks and blooming crest 
O'erhanging from our eagle's nest. 

The Grasmere Lake beneath our gaze 
Put on a modest veil of haze ; 
The Helter-water's silver sheen 
Seemed like a gem embossed in green ; 
Far southward, like a mirror clear, 
Spread thy broad sheet, Winandermere ; 
Coniston Lake beyond, burned through 
The misty robe of mountain-blue 
Away toward the fringes, where 
The mountains melt in purple air. 

The setting sun turned Alchemist, 

And streams and lakes and lakelets kissed, 

And a vast ground afar unrolled 

Of green bespangled o'er with gold : 

The hills as monarchs stand confest, 

A flashing shield on every breast, 

While at their feet their treasure shines ; 

As earth had emptied all her mines 

Of precious ores and gems most rare, 

And poured in molten rivers there. 

These golden treasures fade — and then 
Comes on the solemn twilight scene. 
Bright cherub forms in endless crowds 
Build stairs to heaven of amber clouds, 
And hushed beneath the orange skies 



CHAMBERS OF IMA GER Y. 3 I $ 

The earth in meek enchantment lies ; 
While through the gilded haze afar 
Comes bravely on the Evening Star, 
And tricks his silver beams to be 
Ablaze in Grasmere's mimic sea. 

But not less lovely or sublime 

Are mountains that I used to climb : 

No skyey tint of softer hue 

Adorns Helvellyn's wall of blue, 

Nor does the Day drop sweeter smiles 

On Grasmere or Winander's isles 

Than those beneath Taghanic's eye, 

Where Berkshire's vales and landscapes lie ; 

And yet thy heights must peerless stand, 

Thy glorious mountains, Westmoreland ! 

For holier charms are on thee shed 
Than glories of the evening red. 
An " Evening Ode " thy vales along 
Breathes as an everlasting song ; 
An alchemy of higher skill 
Moulds all thy scenery at its will, 
And hill and vale and lake and stream, 
Fused in the Poet's matchless dream. 
Come forth anew beneath the skies 
That span the hills of Paradise. 

And from thy hills I bore away 
Chambers of fadeless imagery, 
Which clearer rise and warmer burn 
When Wordsworth's quiet page I turn, 
Who in these typic glories found 



316 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

" To what fair countries we are bound " 1 — 
As if, in mansions of the Blest, 
Our heaven might have its golden West, 
And all of earth's resplendent show 
In still diviner beauty glow. 

And He who came — the Incarnate Word — 
When conscious Nature knew her Lord, 
Clothed the pure heaven his gospel brings 
In earth's most rare and beauteous things ; 
The harvest fields of precious dower, 
The cleansing stream, the lowly flower, 
The Kiver rolling ever on 
From living springs beneath the Throne, 
The trees that fringe the sunlit shore 
With rainbow glories bending o'er. 

And ever, to his prophet's view, 
The Word createth all things new. 
At his anointing touch, our sight 
Beholds the Uncreated Light ; 
Sees Nature's dower of splendors, won 
From worlds beyond earth's paler sun ; 2 
Sees the Apostle's creed writ fine 
On penciled flower and eglantine, 
And " hues from the celestial urn " 
On all our Horeb mountains burn. 

O Thou, the all-creative Word ! 
Beneath whom Nature owns her Lord, 

1 See the '" Ode written on an Evening of extraordinary Splendor 
and Beauty.'''' 

2 " From worlds not travelled by the sun 
A portion of the gift is won." — Id. 



CHAMBERS OF IMA GER Y. 3 1 J 

Give me the mind and heart most fit 
To read thine elder Holy Writ, 
That when from earth I bear away 
The chambers of its imagery, 
The hills beneath thy higher skies 
As old familiar friends shall rise, 
And all of earth most pure and fair 
Bloom with immortal beauty there. 



XIX. 
THE IMMEDIATE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 

John xiv. 9. He that hath seen 7?ie hath seen the Father. 

THE great religions of the world, some of which 
preceded Christianity and prepared the way 
for it, have been more explored of late and better 
understood. If we study them with any just de- 
gree of sympathy with what is true and good in 
them, we shall be much less disposed than formerly 
to show them in contrast with the religion of 
Christ. We shall find in all of them revelations 
from God, and truths which when obeyed lead to 
happiness here and hereafter. This fact so auspi- 
cious for the hopes of humanity is used for a double 
purpose in the discussions of the hour. Those who 
regard Christianity only as one of the ethnic relig- 
ions, and not a universal one, treat it very much as 
we do the religion of Buddha or Zoroaster. They 
eliminate what they think to be false and transitory, 
and evolving the good and the true, pass on with it 
and use it in the construction of a new religion which 
they think more comprehending and absolute. Their 
position is not inside the Christian system, nor 
yet in opposition to it ; but professedly above it ; 



320 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

Leaving out of it all that modern thought cannot 
verify, or all that advanced science is supposed to 
antagonize, they decline to take the Christian name, 
because they say it is not broad enough. They 
want a name that covers more, and comprehends 
truths which Christianity does not give them. 

On the other hand, those who find in Christianity 
what these religionists do not, will receive it as the 
absolute religion — not opposed to any of the great 
religions of the past, but the fulfilment of them all. 
They were provisional and preparatory, and given to 
educate the race for the fulness of time. As Origen 
would say, they were the streaks of dawn which the 
coming Word sent on before Him until the Christ 
appeared, the central power of all their splendors, 
and a new sunrise upon the waiting world. The 
Word was in the world before Christ came, in the 
twilight gleams that heralded his appearing, by which 
all the Oriental superstitions were streaked with 
light ; and the Word made flesh was the open day 
that fulfilled the promise of that early dawn. 

You have in these illustrations a clear conception 
of the difference between the " Free Religion " that 
declines the Christian name, and Christianity received 
as the absolute religion of humanity. I only state 
their relative positions, not designing to argue the 
points between them except as concerns a single doc- 
trine of faith. The Free Religion eliminates from 
Christianity the doctrine of a mediator on the plea 



THE IMMEDIATE KNOWIEDGE OF GOD. 32 1 

that the heart craves an immediate approach to God. 
Humanity, especially in this present stage of its prog- 
ress, needs no intervention between itself and Di- 
vinity, and it is time, we are told, that any second 
person or sub-deity should retire from the field, that 
God may come directly to the thirsting mind and 
heart, and in humanity as in nature, be all in all. 

As a Christian believer I should accept this as the 
crucial test of all true religion. That religion is 
best that yields God to us in most immediate and 
ample measure ; that religion is fatally defective 
that yields Him not, and will get no permanent foot- 
hold on the earth. And I hold it the distinguishing 
excellency of the Christian faith that it brings the 
worshipper into most immediate relations with his 
God, and I reject the new religion precisely because 
it takes him out of these relations and sets him afloat, 
till he drifts away into the unknown, where God is 
lost in mist or in darkness. 

It is a strange misapprehension of the Christian 
doctrine of a mediator that it offers to the worship- 
per a sub-deity to come between him and the su- 
preme object of adoration. It does not give you one 
person in your devotions to stand between you and 
another person. That the mediaeval Christianity fell 
into this idolatry was natural enough, infested as it 
was with superstitions brought over from Paganism. 
That the Christianity of to-day, best represented 
either by the Unitarian or Trinitarian division, is 
21 



322 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

given to any such idolatry, you will look in vain for 
evidence. 

What is the office of a mediator ? Not to put any- 
thing between the worshipper and his God, but to 
remove everything out of the way that hinders their 
full and blissful communion. It is to open channels 
of intercourse where none existed before ; or if they 
did exist, to widen them and clear them of all hin- 
drances, that the River of Peace flowing out from the 
throne shall be unfailing and free. How this is the 
rich provision of Christianity as found in no other 
religion, we now proceed to demonstrate. 

It is a revelation of God. It is a revelation of 
man. And as such it renders possible the gift of the 
Spirit in larger measure which yields God to man in 
the most perfect atonement. 

I. No religion can bring God into immediate rela- 
tions with the soul unless it first reveals God as He is. 
The mere guess-work out of our uncleansed human 
nature will only be a piled up superstition between 
us and Him. Brahminism establishes no healthful 
relations between God and the worshipper, because 
man never comes to his rights, but is merged and lost 
in the All. Buddhism establishes no such relations, 
because though man comes to his rights, when we 
look at the centre to find God, there is a total blank. 
Parseeism and Judaism assert the rights of both 
God and man, but never open the channels between 
them where the River of Peace can flow without 



THE IMMEDIATE KNOWLEDGE OE GOD. 323 

hindrance. God is the Omnipotent Father, was the 
affirmation both of the Greek and Roman religions, 
but He was only the sublimation of our corrupt hu- 
man fatherhood seated on Olympus with more storm- 
ful passions, and wielding more potent thunders. 
Mohammedanism is a later Judaism. " God is God," 
is the identical proposition in whose iteration it never 
tires. Free Religion prolongs the strain, always in 
peril of losing all conception of Divine personal attri- 
butes, or sinking them to mere qualities, till the affir- 
mation only means, God is the unknowable Force 
of the universe. The grand affirmation of Chris- 
tianity is — God is divinely human ; and this is af- 
firmed not in words alone, which might be piled up 
to the skies without giving us a revelation. It pre- 
sents a Perfect Humanity in which the Divine attri- 
butes are incarnated in the image of the invisible 
God. Hence the declarations of Jesus, " He that hath 
seen me hath seen the Father." " No one knoweth 
the Father save the Son, and he to whom the Son 
shall reveal Him." Plainly He does not mean that in 
seeing the Christ we see God with the bodily eye, 
but that in Him both by what He teaches and by 
what He is, the Divine qualities are shadowed forth 
as personal attributes ; the same in a perfected hu- 
manity as in the All-perfect Divinity. 

Words alone cannot reveal God, simply because 
all human speech has its roots in human experiences 
and passions, and therefore has the taint of our hu- 



324 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

man imperfection and depravity. The Christian 
ideas of justice, forgiveness, love, mercy, compassion, 
have no equivalents where there has been no corre- 
sponding experience, and so they float in air without 
any roots to engraft them on and give them a rest- 
ing-place. Hence the ante-Christian objects of wor- 
ship are heroes deified ; the gods evolved from our 
frail human nature, taking its faults and vices along 
with them. " God is love," so the missionary 
tried to teach one of the South African tribes, and 
they sensualized the thought, and it sank down 
straightway into lust. Pile up the words as you 
may, and string out the adjectives to any extent you 
please, you cannot make them redolent of the Di- 
vine charms and glories, because the words can 
reach no height above the human nature in which 
they have their root, and out of which they draw 
their meaning and inspiration ; and therefore, lan- 
guage alone, gathered from all the dialects of the 
earth, could not yield to human thought the immacu- 
late conception of the Godhead. No, nor could any 
language floating down out of heaven do it, for an- 
gelic words would be untranslatable into our human 
speech because they have no roots in our human ex- 
perience and history. Indeed, angels did come in 
this way all along the ages, and through all the Old 
Testament history, giving men dreams of a better 
state, and prophecies of a better future ; and the 
dreams and the prophecies sank down straightway 



THE IMMEDIATE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 325 

into carnal conceptions of a temporal Messiah ; and 
never were these conceptions dissipated, and our hu- 
man thought lifted up to the Divine Idea, until the 
angel-song floated over Bethlehem, and the star 
stood still over the heavenly babe lying in a manger. 
The Divine Word was then not only spoken, but 
made flesh, and assumed human relations. All those 
goodly words whereby we describe the Divine attri- 
butes, justice, mercy, forgiveness, and love, He has 
filled out with new meaning ; lifting up our low and 
sensuous vocabularies into the Divine light, and 
breathing the Divine life into them. They have the 
taint of our selfishness taken clean out of them. 
The Christ in the midst of the ages is a twofold 
revelation. He is the revelation alike of perfect Di- 
vinity and perfect humanity, for one is the image of 
the other copied down out of heaven. He shows 
us the God we ought to worship, and brings Him 
nigh, in order that his attributes, though in finite 
degree, may be transferred to us and we made par- 
takers of the Divine nature and the image of the 
Divine perfections. 

II. But man must be revealed as well as God, and 
revealed as he is, else there can be no such corre- 
spondency between them as to create man in the Di- 
vine image. And what is called "the integrity of 
human nature," and its power of arriving at all nec- 
essary truth by self evolution, is a doctrine whose 
logic fares poorly, whether you examine it in the 



326 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

light of science or of history. Hereditary. depravity 
is not a mere theologic dogma, but a scientific fact, 
as well established as that of the precession of the 
equinoxes or the law of gravitation. The lusts and 
passions, with the cruelties which they engender, 
and their baleful eclipse of the godlike in human 
nature, are patent enough to any but our closet 
theologies, which refuse to see the world as it is. I 
know of no surer way of judging of human nature 
than by the fruits it has yielded and is yielding still. 
Its worth and grandeur and its glorious possibilities 
I know in the light of Christianity, which reveals 
our immortality ; and in the light of history, which 
reports the select martyr train who have put on its 
nobler traits and worn its crowns of royalty. But 
when you talk of the integrity of human nature, I 
must look at the masses who grope in twilight, and at 
a world that groaneth and travaileth in pain together 
until now. I must look at a country covered with 
the fresh stains of fraternal blood, holding as its wards 
millions of freedmen ; made such, not through the 
spontaneous action of a great people, but through 
the scourgings of the avenging Justice. I must look 
upon the whole brute creation subjected to the tyr- 
anny of man, dumbly pleading for mercy without 
finding it. " The integrity of human nature ! " You 
mean probably your own human nature, and those 
of your fellow-believers who occupy the advanced 
position of the world and see all things in the rose- 



THE IMMEDIATE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 327 

light of the new age. Rut how came you up there 
on that lofty height, and how came you by the light 
of the new age ? You climbed there by the help of 
Christianity, and you see the world coming short of 
the Divine ideals only as you judge it by the law of 
human brotherhood proclaimed on the mountains of 
Palestine, and incarnate in a Divine Life made a 
whole sacrifice for universal humanity, and poured 
out on the heights of Calvary, 

To reveal God as He is, is to reveal man both as 
he is and as he needs to be. The Divine perfections 
brought down in open illustration amid the corrup- 
tions of earth, pour rebuke and condemnation upon 
them. We are brought face to face with the infinite 
purity and justice. Before that we were " alive with- 
out the law " — alive to ourselves, our pride, our 
hatreds, our revenges, in whose gratification the old 
heroic virtues shone forth with such lurid splendor. 
The commandment comes and we are a body of 
death. These supposed virtues had the taint of self 
in them all. We bow before the Divine manifesta- 
tation. " I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell 
among a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have 
seen the King, the Lord of hosts." The two in- 
extinguishable wants of human nature are now dis- 
closed — want of purity and want of life — want of 
cleansing with this body of death moved out, and 
want of the Divine Life to flow in with new creative 
power, that the Divine human perfections in their 



328 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

finite degree may be transferred to us and clothe us 
in the righteousness of God. You may have no 
such want as this. But remember that multitudes 
before have been in the same condition that you are, 
but found in their profounder experience that the 
want was tenfold more urgent for not being before 
felt and acknowledged, in order that our native con- 
ceit might be taken down to make room for the Di- 
vine riches to come in. The Fatherhood of God 
being once revealed, without any taint from our cor- 
rupt fatherhoods carried up into it, the law of uni- 
versal brotherhood is given also, and the ideal of 
heavenly society has dawned upon the earth. Man 
is to be made perfect only as God is perfect. There 
is not one kind of perfection for Him and another 
for us, but only as his attributes of love, justice, and 
power are transferred to human nature, and wrought 
in it, do we become his children, and bear his like- 
ness. But in our reception of the Divine life and 
purity, the law of demand and supply holds forever 
— the thirst must come before the slaking, the hun- 
ger before the food. 

III. The revelation of God and the revelation of 
man are preparatory to their direct communion and 
atonement. They are in order that God and man 
may meet together, and human nature be cleansed, 
enriched, and impleted from the Divine. This is the 
crowning work of Christianity, and the highest boon 
which it brings. The gift of the Holy Spirit de- 



THE IMMEDIATE KNOWLEDGE OE GOD. 329 

scencling in the line of Christian society, not with 
diminishing but with cumulative power, is the agency, 
which Jesus foretold, and for which He came to pre- 
pare the way. Teacher, Revealer, Admonisher, Com- 
forter, describe its offices and its work in the human 
soul. It could not come till there was a place and 
organism for its reception. Man must first be put in 
right relations with his brother before he can have 
any such relations with God as will bring Him near. 
That done, and a true brotherhood inaugurated, 
the gift was waited for and it came. It came 
as "a rushing mighty wind" because of the new 
courses made for the direct agency of God in 
the human heart. The Holy Spirit is the same in 
all religions, faint and indistinct when hindered by 
their superstitions and depravities, full as the noon- 
tide when these have been cleared away. In the 
language of the New Testament this agency is per- 
sonified, and in the creeds of the Church it has be- 
come hypostatized as if it were a person indeed. 
The reason of this is obvious enough. The word 
" influence " is too feeble and inexpressive to de- 
scribe its power, so direct is the action of God within 
the soul. He comes as with a flaming sword to cut 
down our flimsy conceits and imaginations, and 
wound the heart with a sense of its depravity and its 
need. He comes as with a refiner's fire to burn 
away the old stubble of unrighteousness and dead 
works, and to kindle the heart with a new and abound- 



330 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

ing love. And He comes with a noontide of comfort 
and peace after the victory over self is gained, and 
the consecration is unreserved and complete. The 
subject of this Divine agency and renewal will not 
call it an influence. He is convinced that there is 
within it a Divine intelligence, and whether in the 
call to repentance, or the call to duty, or the whisper- 
ing assurances of the eternal peace, that there is a 
Divine personality within them all, and that these are 
not states and conditions engendered and evolved out 
of himself. They render prayer not a self-excite- 
ment, but a perpetual feast of the soul with her God. 
But in the gospel sense and in the consciousness of 
the deepest and most intelligent Christian experience 
so far as I am acquainted with it, the Holy Spirit is 
not a person in any modern acceptation of the word. 
It is the inworking creative Divine energy person- 
ified, regarded as if a person ; so immediately and 
with such fulness does God yield Himself to the 
heart in a Christian calling and discipleship. It is 
not one deity coming between you and another 
deity. It is the worshipper placed in such imme- 
diate relations with the Divine Person that he is 
brought near and speaks to the soul as Saviour, 
Comforter, and Friend. 

The office of Christ as Mediator, and the supreme 
value of the Christian Gospel, become apparent. The 
immediate knowledge of God is the consummation 
of its power in the gift of the Holy Spirit. The 



THE IMMEDIATE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 33 1 

Mediator puts nothing between us and God, but 
moves everything that would shut us out from his 
presence. The Holy Spirit, said Jesus, " shall take 
of mine and show it unto you." What I tell or show- 
to you about God, He shall reveal and make known 
to you in your profounder experience. What I mani- 
fest to you outwardly, He shall make good to you 
in your inward beholdings. What I give you ad- 
dressed to the eye or the ear, He shall give you as 
the possession of the heart and mind. 

A man has been shut up in some prison-house so 
long that he has come to regard it as a world in itself, 
and his solitary lamp as all the light there is. Some 
friend comes along and opens his prison doors and 
leads him out, and gives him the noon-day sun in 
place of his taper's blaze, and the whole horizon in- 
stead of his prison walls. This is the work of Christ 
as Mediator. Men had taken their own superstitions 
as the light of the world, and their provisional relig- 
ions for the absolute and universal. He brings 
them out of their limitations, puts the soul into im- 
mediate relations with the Infinite Father, and gives 
her the freedom of all his wealth and bounty. The 
pantheistic religions and Free Religion running by a 
swift logic into pantheism, begin by asserting the 
soul's immediate relation to God. But when they 
make man essentially divine, consubstantial with God 
and a part of Him, they abolish that relation except 
«\f part is related to the whole. The Christian atone- 



332 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

ment is not oneness of substance, but oneness of 
spirit, end, and operation in an eternal friendship. 
11 Henceforth I call you not servants but friends." 

We are not to confound the accidental or tempo- 
rary adjuncts of the Pentecostal scene with the 
essential conditions of the Holy Spirit and its crea- 
tive agency in humanity. Its inauguration as the 
distinctive power of Christianity had its outcome in 
visible signs which disappear as its currents become 
broad, deep, and pervasive. The broader and deeper 
they are, the less of apparent miracle or anomaly have 
attended it. But it has been an essential working 
power of the Gospel through all the Christian ages. 
The Divine Truth or God objectively revealed, and 
the Holy Spirit by which that truth is kindled and 
kept alive in the soul, are the two operative forces of 
Christianity, and have wrought its miracles to the 
present time. For its power in changing men, some- 
times grossly depraved and insensate, into tender 
recipients of the Spirit of Christ and inspired heralds 
of his salvation, is its continued miracle, though 
operating by spiritual laws, and greater than any 
outward signs and wonders. It is no valid objection 
against Christianity as it is, or as Christ gives it to 
us, that it has been mingled with human additions. 
Its power in clearing itself of these corruptions which 
hinder the Holy Spirit in its clearest energy ; its 
cumulative force, whether as the objective truth or 
the renewing grace which brings it home to the con- 



THE IMMEDIATE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 333 

science and converts the truth into life, is its most 
divine authentication, and as I read the signs of prog- 
ress, this was never more manifest than now. 

I do not doubt that what I say of the Holy Spirit 
as bringing the soul into immediate relations with 
God, and giving it a new and abiding consciousness 
of his comfort and love, will be spoken to some of 
you in an unknown tongue. But remember, I am 
not appealing to the private experience of this per- 
son or that. I point you to the stream of Christian 
history coursing its interior way for eighteen hun- 
dred years ; the channels which the Spirit is making 
for itself deeper and broader, all the more effective 
because more noiseless in its flow. Not alone in the 
vast enlargement of the Church of Christ, but its 
growing unity, its larger and more overflowing 
charity, and its sense of a more deep and tender 
humanity, are the signs of this cumulative power. 
You have not felt it ? Very likely, because you have 
not complied with the conditions. They demand 
a self-renunciation unreserved and entire, and they 
demand an organism where the Holy Spirit may be 
received in multiplied measure, and whence the 
Christ may have a new and constant forthgoing for 
the conquest of the world. Individual consecration, 
and that consecration made effective in a conse- 
crated life and calling, are both essential conditions. 
I will not deny that a man may take his solitary 
walk to heaven and do good by the way, as occasion 



334 SERMONS AND SONGS. 

offers. But we are speaking now of the Holy Spirit 
as it floods the soul with a most full and abiding 
sense of the presence, the peace and the love of 
God. And I say this is not found in your solitary 
walk, or on your rock of independence, as it is found 
in the brotherhood of hearts and minds lifted up in 
prayer together. It did not single out John and 
Peter and Andrew, and endow them apart and 
separate. It was when they were " with one accord 
in one place," that it swept all their hearts as one 
human lyre, and so it has been ever since in the 
Church of Christ. The individual alone and apart 
may not receive it in full measure. The collective 
body of Christ coming together with one accord to 
do his work and extend his reign have always been 
" endued with power from on high." 



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this is his chef-d' 'ceuvre in many respects. . . . We know no religious 
work of the age adapted to make a deeper, more practical, and more 
gladdening impression on thoughtful and lofty minds." — Christian 
Register. 

" Few books have pleased me so much as ' Foregleams of Immor- 
tality.' It is full of beauty and truth. The writer is wise from Swe- 
denborg, and has his own gifts besides. I can scarcely conceive of 
his writings not impressing many, and deeply. I have lent the book 
and recommended it in England, where the husks of the old theology 
interfere much with development and growth. Certainly it is a most 
beautiful and pungent book." — Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in 
a letter to an American friend. 

" There is much in the details of the volume which is instructive, 
and especially as regards the reality and some of the features of the 
intermediate state. . . . The concluding part of the book is entirely 
new, being on the ' Symphony of Religions,' and sets forth the im- 
perfect but yet valuable testimony of the various heathen religions to 
the grand truth of Immortality." — Chicago Advance. 

" A very interesting volume. The author has herein discussed 
the pregnant theme of Immortality with signal ability, clothing his 
thoughts in language so chaste and elegant, and illustrating his ideas 
by such a profusion of appropriate imagery, that the book has all the 
fascination of a beautiful poem." — The Swedenborgian. 

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